


Petals to the Metal

by AmaraqWolf



Series: The Adventure Zone: Balance [5]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, Other, Still going strong, more than just a transcript of canon, much like magnus and railsplitter i am still hacking away at this project, please listen to the podcast if you can, the mcelroy brothers are funnier than i will ever hope to be
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:41:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 31,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22424254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmaraqWolf/pseuds/AmaraqWolf
Summary: The hunt is on! Someone's gotten hold of a Grand Relic, and they're using it to... rob a bank. There are petals. There are metals. There's more than one important tree. There's a drag race. The fight for this Relic is going to be prickly.Note: This work is part of a collection aiming to adapt the incredible TAZ: Balance arc into a cohesive series of novels. I have several friends who are eager to experience the story but, for various reasons, cannot handle podcasts. Until the graphic novels catch up, this is for them. The story, plot, and characters belong to Griffin, Travis, Justin, and Clint McElroy; I highly recommend enjoying the incredible story through their podcast if you are capable of doing so. They're a lot funnier than I can ever hope to be. Otherwise, please enjoy!
Relationships: Hurley/Sloane (The Adventure Zone), Merle Highchurch/Vines
Series: The Adventure Zone: Balance [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1491395
Kudos: 10





	1. Merle Does Upsetting Things With Vines

Come on in

Come to the place where fun never ends

Come on in it's time to party with

Garfield and friends…  
 **… It's T _he Adventure Zone._**

~~~~

Sounds of combat ring out from the Bureau of Balance's training dojo, affectionately known as the Icosagon, a word which here means 'twenty-sided polygon'. Steel clashes on metal, fist thunks against leather, spells  _ whoosh _ and explode mostly harmlessly in the air above all the fighters. It's a friendly three-on-three duel — Merle, Magnus, and Taako versus Killian, Avi, and Pringles — with dozens of other agents standing on the sidelines watching, cheering, endlessly curious about what the three now-infamous Reclaimers are capable of in a fight.

Sadly, they're disappointed, because before Magnus can do the super-cool move he was absolutely gearing up to do, the Director's voice booms through the room, requesting the presence of her Reclaimers in her office for an urgent matter.

Killian drops her crossbow to her side. "Aw, man," she says, disappointed. "I was just about to put the hurt on y'all. I was  _ just _ about to use my limit break. Y'all don't even  _ know _ what I'm capable of."

"We know you're capable of shooting arrows at us," Magnus points out, grinning, as the two teams come together to high-five and declare the sparring match a draw.

~~~~

The Director waits with a sombre expression as they join her in her office, speaking quietly to Davenport, going through some papers. It quickly dissipates the adventurers' high spirits and cheerful camaraderie.

She looks up with a start as they enter, and stands tall to greet them, the very picture of elegance with her coat and her white oak staff. "I have an urgent mission for you," she begins immediately. "You'll need to depart posthaste —"

"Well,  _ hello _ ," Magnus interrupts her pointedly.

"Oh, sorry, hello."

"How are you doin'?" asks Merle.

"I am doing just fine, Merle."

"Say hello to my fish!" Magnus offers up the glass ball with Steven in it, looking far too proud of himself.

"You want me to addre —? Oh, look at that. Yes, I see you've got a little friend there. Does he do anything?"

Magnus shrugs. "He swims around in his tiny ball. And he loves me."

"Good. If you're quite done, I have a job for the three of you. It should be much easier than your last job, although your last job entailed you  _ literally _ going to a train station and getting a thing out of a box."

"There was a little more to it than  _ that _ ," Magnus grumbles.

"I need the three of you to report to the city of Goldcliff."

"Mhm."

"Certainly you've been — certainly you're familiar with Goldcliff?"

Taako shakes his head. "We actually have only been to three places, and most of them aren't  _ there _ anymore."

"Well, Goldcliff you've certainly  _ heard _ of. It is the financial seat of power in all of the realm. It's where the money lives. There's a Grand Relic one of our Seekers has found, in the city of Goldcliff, and it is in the possession of a master criminal known as The Raven. We have been unable to apprehend The Raven —"

"Ugh," says Magnus. "That's so Raven."

All three of them laugh. "The first blow!" Merle announces.

"The first of many to come, I'm sure," says the Director, somehow both stony-faced and resignedly amused. "The Raven is named for the black feathered mask that she wears. You will need to apprehend her, and retrieve the Relic that she has been utilising to wreak havoc all around Goldcliff. This time, I can actually give you some helpful information as to the nature of this Relic —"

Magnus grins. "Sweet. Just out of curiosity, this Raven, is she, like… evil? Vigilante? Is she kind of a Catwoman-esque figure, or…?"

"I'm almost certain that sort of information… how should I say this — will be developed throughout the course of your… story. Your investigation. Life is like a story, I guess, if you want to think about it like that." The Director pauses, and then draws herself up. "The Relic she has used to up her criminal game is called the Gaia Sash. It gives the wearer immense control over nature, over the powers of wind, and thunder, and flora —"

"—and  _ heart _ ," Magnus suggests. "And  _ fire. _ "

"What makes this so curious is that the Raven has taken up residence in one of the biggest  _ cities _ in all the land, and not in the forest, where she would be a god. She'd be  _ impossible _ to apprehend there, thanks to all this power that is lent to her by the Gaia Sash. You will need to go to Goldcliff, work with the Goldcliff militia to bring the Raven in, and secure the sash, while still acting under the level of discretion that we require from you, without too many people catching on to what you're doing."

"That sounds pretty easy!" Taako decides. "It sounds better than the  _ train _ ."

"Yeah," Magnus agrees. 

"I mean, it's harder 'cause there's a whole city, but if we just work at it, I'm sure we'll figure something out."

"If we just work together and stay positive —"

"Yeah! Like he said!"

"Guys," says Merle, "we suck."

"What?"

"We  _ suck _ ."

Taako raises his brow. "Speak for yourself, homie, I'm on a  _ whole _ other level."

"I  _ have _ been very impressed with your job performances," the Director confirms. "But you do sound…  _ this _ level of confidence I've never heard before from you three."

Magnus nods. "I think a lot of it has to do with — our yearly review is coming up pretty soon, and we're all hoping for a pay bump…"

" _ Oh _ , I see. You're acting confident because you want money. That's the secret, right there."

"Law of attraction," Taako says with a shrug, "you know? Do we need any equipment for this, or should we just like — get moving?"

"That's up to you."

"Got any leads?"

"We have a Seeker on the ground that you can get more information from. He is  _ also _ acting discreetly. His position is fairly high up, and he doesn't want anyone knowing he works for a shadowy cabal like ourselves."

"Is he with the militia? Do we have any way of getting in contact with him?"

"I'm sure you'll figure that out."

"How about a name?" asks Magnus. "Can we have a name?"

"You've met us, right?" says Taako. "You've  _ met _ us. Right? We need  _ all the help we can get _ ."

The Director sighs. "He is the Captain of the Goldcliff Militia."

"There we go!"

"His name is Captain Bain."

Magnus nods, digesting this. "Is Captain his first name?"

"Captain Captain Bain, yes."

"We're gonna get moving, then," says Taako. "Unless you have anything else to impart? Any other leads? Hot leads? Got any road snacks?"

The Director nods. "Yes. I've brewed you up some gorp, and I think you're going to love my special — you want to know the secret?"

"Love?" Merle guesses.

"Don't say raisins," Taako pleads.

"It's not raisins. Those are a  _ shoe-in _ for gorp. I think that's what the R in gorp stands for. No, my  _ secret _ — come, lean in close —"

Taako leans in close. Magnus leans in far away.

" _ Pistachios _ ," she whispers.

"Shelled?" asks Merle, intrigued.

"Yes. I leave the shells on them. Gives you stronger, sturdier teeth. Now get the  _ hell _ out of my office."

"Are you saying to me right now that you made gorp?" asks Taako. " _ You _ made gorp?"

"Please leave. You have stuff to do. Go.  _ Please _ go. You're going to lose the trail."

~~~~

Avi is still sweaty from their sparring match when they go to meet him at the launch pad, still wearing his loose tank and workout clothes. 

"Hey Avi," Merle greets him with a wave. "Remember when we kicked your  _ ass  _ back at the Icosagon?"

"I don't think — I think you're misremembering, I got in quite a few good blows on you guys. I love you, though."

"Listen," says Magnus, "we don't want to talk about who blew who. We gotta go."

"Oh, I see — you turned my words around on me. You got me again!"

"It's classic," says Taako. "Can we go?"

"Yeah, hop into the fun ball."

"Just — yeah, do you have some sort of anti-nausea medication we can get before, or am I misremembering that?"

Magnus claps a hand down on one of Taako's shoulders and pushes him toward the glass sphere. "OK, bye Avi!"

"Don't worry, nausea happens to the best of us — and actually, if you guys remember," says Avi, taking a flask from his jacket, "I keep this on hand, for when new folks show up, if they're having trouble getting acclimated. Give them a little nip o' hooch. So if you guys want a nip o' hooch to help you on the way down, that's fine. I'm just worried for if you make it a habit, then it's a problem."

"They should come up with a name for that," Taako says. "Making a habit out of drinking."

"Why don't you guys hop right in that fun ball, and I'll get you going."

The sphere pressurises as Avi shuts the door, it rolls down the chute into the cannon chamber, and with one last "Good luck! Have a good time down there in the world!" from Avi, the sphere is fired into the cloudless sky at a speed decidedly not  _ any _ slower than the last time Merle, Taako, and Magnus used the cannon.

~~~~

It's a good few minutes before the glass sphere starts to descend towards the sparkling city of Goldcliff — not near any swampland this time, which can only be good news as far as the three adventurers are concerned. It  _ is _ , however, situated on the edge of a desert cliff, carved out of the surrounding bleak landscape by two crystal-blue rivers. The rivers surround the city like an oasis shell and culminate in two breathtaking waterfalls cascading thunderously over the cliff's edge.

The city itself seems to be nothing but tall buildings and lush greenery, shimmering in the unrelenting sun. Outside the city, beyond the rivers, out where the landscape is barren and devoid of life, long lines of dust clouds are just about visible from their seat in the sky. The dust clouds seem to carve a straight path around a circuit, and as the glass sphere descends closer to the ground, they can see that the dust clouds are being whipped up by speeding wagons, following a racecourse marked out by giant pylons. 

Taako pulls the brake to slow their descent, giving them a marvelous view of the biggest building in the city — a twenty-storey tall golden structure with a gaudy golden statue on top holding a wreath emblazoned with the words  ** GOLDCLIFF TRUST ** . As Taako tries to decide how much you could get by hawking a statue that size, it becomes clear that gigantic thorny vines are creeping up over the walls towards the top of the building, slowly and efficiently consuming it. There's a flurry of activity down on ground-level at the entrance, people and wagons circling near where the vines have all burst from the ground.

The sphere lands with a  _ thud _ in an alleyway about a quarter mile away from the whole mess. It does not get eaten by swamp muck, and as the three Reclaimers step out of the alleyway, it doesn't look as though anyone has even taken notice of their bizarre flight into the city. A balloon pops out the top of the sphere and carries it away, right over the heads of some local neighbourhood kids playing a game involving a ball and a hoop.

Militia wagons take up most of the space in front of the Goldcliff Trust as Taako, Magnus, and Merle walk up. The building itself is completely hidden by a veil of thick, thorny, quivering vines, which the militia are cautiously giving a wide berth. In the back of the crowd is a broad mustachioed man in his late 60s yelling gruff orders at his underlings, and before anyone can talk about what the best course of action here might be, Taako wanders on up to the obvious militia captain.

"Hail and well met and stuff," he says with a wave. "Uh, I'm Taako, and we're from — well, you know —"

"Stop, hold on, wait wait wait," the captain snaps. " _ Berry! Get Private Barry out of the vines!  _ Oh, my god… listen!  _ Sergeant Berry, get Private Barry out of those vines! _ " He gives a very loud sigh, and levels a flat stare at Taako. "Sorry, what were you saying? My sergeant — Detective Strawberry — he's got a lot of different titles. Who the hell are you three? What are you doing? I'm  _ busy _ here."

"Are you Bain?"

"Yeah, I'm Captain Captain Bain. What of it?"

"We're from the  _ wink _ ," says Magnus, "and the  _ nudge  _ sent us."

Bain raises an eyebrow at them.

"Let's put it this way," says Taako, " _ you _ can understand  _ us _ when we say the word 'Voidfish'."

Bain nods slowly. "Yep, that does it. Good stuff, good stuff. Let me see your arms, though."

Magnus flexes. Merle holds out his leg. Taako holds out the arm that doesn't have the bracer on it. Bain looks all of them over, and then shrugs. "Alright. You seem like trustworthy folks."

"Can I just compliment you on your judge of character?" says Taako, as Merle barks out surprised laughter. "You have our number. You're a great militia captain guy. Good policing, captain."

"So what are we looking at here?" Magnus asks. "What's the sitch?"

"Listen," says Bain, "I'm more big-picture, you know, direction, lot of producer credits on this —"

"We're not  _ hiring _ ," Magnus interrupts. "What's the situation here?"

"I mean, we  _ are _ coworkers already…"

"Yeah, I guess that's true."

"Here's the situation. The Raven is in the building, I'm  _ guessing _ stealing all the gold — just going out a limb here, there's a lot of gold in there, a lot of peoples' finances are all tied up in the Goldcliff Trust, and so — she's in there. We managed to evacuate a lot of the building, but as you can see, we're having trouble gaining access to it, on account of the vines."

Taako nods. "You want us to go in and get her?"

" _ That _ would be — can I tell you something? That would be  _ terrific _ ."

"Let me ask you this follow-up," says Taako. 

"Hit me."

"Do you think we're good enough to do that? I dunno. How good's The Raven? Would you say we're better?"

"Well, we've seen a lot of shit," Magnus says. "We've been around the block, you know what I mean? This isn't our first rodeo. It's our  _ third _ ."

"I'm familiar with your rodeos," Bain agrees, nodding. "You guys are legends."

Magnus and Taako blink at each other, looking pleased. "Go on," Taako implores.

"You're legends in… some small circles. That's what happens when most of the world can't know you exist."

"You know what, that's fair. Listen, we're about to turn this shit into our hidden temple — these  _ legends _ are wandering right on in there to do your job for you."

"How many civilians are left in the building?" asks Magnus.

"We think we cleared 'em all out," Bain answers. 

"Aw, too bad," says Merle. "We're pretty good at offing civilians."

"I gotta say, that's an upsetting thing to hear, I'm an officer of the law, I —"

"Well," says Magnus, "they usually turn out to have been bad in the first place. But we don't know that when we do it."

"Through pure, stupid luck," Taako murmurs, looking up at the building and the thick veil of vines wrapped around the entrance. "So what's the plan of attack here?"

Magnus walks over to the vines, draws Railsplitter, and begins hacking his way through them.

"Let me point out, Captain Cap'n," says Merle.

"Please, call me Captain. Just call me one, and I'll assume you're using my first name."

"Okay, One. Magnus and I kind of have the whole gruff voice thing staked out, so if you could just go ahead and change that, I'd appreciate it."

Bain peers at him. "I'm sorry, do you want to have a gruff-off?"

"Oh  _ yeah _ ."

"OK, Taako, you're the only non-gruff individual here, I want you to give me a word —"

"Sure," says Taako skeptically, "if you're going to make a big federal case out of it."

"— and then we're gonna go around in a triangle, say the word, and see who does the gruffest job with it."

"Yeah," says Merle gruffly, " _ bring it _ ."

"OK! Your phrase is 'Taako rules'."

"I feel like I'm really making some progress!" Magnus yells from over by the entrance, where he's still hacking unsuccessfully away at the thick, pulsating vines.

"Taako rules," Bain says gruffly.

"No!" says Taako, scandalised. "Try again!"

"No, you're right, I fucked up. I had one chance and I fucked it right up."

"Well, let me hear the other two, and I'll be the final judge."

" **_ TAAKO RULES, _ ** " says Merle gruffly.

Bain takes a step back. "What the  _ hell _ ."

" **_ YEAH. THAT'S GRUFF, BABY. _ ** "

"I'm gonna need some help over here with the vines!" Magnus calls over to them.

"Why'd he rush in?" Taako wonders, before immediately rolling his eyes. "Oh, right. Because he's Magnus."

~~~~

Because prickly vines are not, technically speaking, trees, Railsplitter doesn't manage to slice instantly through even one of them. Because the vines are still, however,  _ plants _ , and Railsplitter is still sharpened metal, Magnus does manage to make a little headway with his hack-and-slash technique. But the progress is limited, partly because the vines regrow as fast as Magnus can cut them down, thicker and stronger than they were before.

"Vines, vines, go away," Magnus chants as he hacks away. "Please let me through… I can't think of a rhyme."

Amazingly, this tactic does not work.

Merle, who figures they'll be here all day if they're relying on Magnus to get them inside, has an idea. He steps up to the curtain of vines and raises his Extreme Teen Bible, invoking the name of the nature deity Pan to charm all plants and animals around him. Steven, swimming around in his little fish sphere inside Magnus's pack, presses desperately against the side of the sphere to try and get closer to Merle. Merle silently commands him to poop, and he does, and the waste immediately dissolves in the water to magically dissipate out of the sphere.

With that taken care of, Merle faces the vines in front of him.

"Hey, baby," he says, his voice low and sultry and full of questionable power. "I  _ love _ your tendrils. Let me see your pistils and stamen."

The vines enveloping the front door begin to flower and bloom in response to Merle's tantalising words.

"Hey there, vines," Merle says, pitching his voice lower to become even more sultry.

Taako puts his hands over his eyes. "Can I leave?"

"You know what, my buddies over here are gonna sing a little, uh, sexy music —"

" _ No we're not _ !"

"Come on, sing something," Merle chides, and the flowers bloom a little more in their direction, curious.

Taako heaves a sigh. "Leeeet's… let's bloom togeeeether~…"

"I got here a few minutes ago," Merle tells the vines, nice and low, "and I could  _ not _ take my eyes off you. I looked at you across the square, sixty feet away, and I said, do  _ not _ be choppin' on this baby… look at that sweet,  _ sweet _ pollen sac… so, anyway, it would be really,  _ really _ good if you would spread your vines… and open up… and let us walk in through your door, if you know what I'm talking about."

With a jubilant puff of honeysuckle dew, the vines part, allowing them entrance into the building.

Taako and Magnus go in  _ immediately _ , both having resolved to never speak of this out loud ever again. Merle lingers long enough to wink at the vines — the vines wink back — and then the curtain closes again, trapping them inside the Goldcliff Trust. 

One of the vines whips Merle flirtatiously on the butt in the split second before the door closes.


	2. A Thorny Predicament

If you don't like this chapter

You can make like a tree and leaf

I'm sorry I didn't mean that it's been a really rough week…  
… **It's T _he Adventure Zone._**

~~~~

A regal carpet stretches out before the three Reclaimers atop a marble floor, flanked by massive white columns surrounding a grand fountain in the centre of the lobby. A row of teller booths line the far wall past a secure door in a glass wall. Vines creep in through the foundation of the building all around, but all three adventurers' attention is taken up by the gigantic, quivering tree that has split the fountain nearly in half, growing unnaturally out of the porcelain and displacing water into pools on the surrounding floor. 

A shrill alarm rings out unanswered. If there was silence, the shrill alarm would definitely be ruining it.

The tree continues to quiver, shedding some of its leaves, which is odd considering they're indoors and there's no wind or breeze to speak of. Magnus considers it for a moment, and then takes out his Lens of Straight Creeping to examine the ground at their feet. Most of the footprints on the floor are scattered and confused, clearly the paths of evacuees running out of the building in a panic. One set of prints, however, begins right at the front entrance, vanishes for fifteen feet, reappears, then vanishes for fifteen feet again, over and over around the fountain until it reaches one of the exit doors on the far left of the lobby.

"Hey, Magnus," says Taako, after Magnus describes the path of the footprints to them. "You want to go look at the booths, or you want to go through that door?"

"I mean, let's check out the booths  _ first _ ."

Tres Horny Boys step forward — and the tree awakens, creaking, turning towards them, knots and features widening in its trunk. Turns out, it's not a tree — it's a treant, a powerful and ancient monster that only  _ looks _ like a tree, and its name is Trent, and it rears back to swing one large limb in a wide arc towards the three adventurers on the ground.

Merle, with the advantage of his lack of height, immediately ducks out of its way. "Hey, guys, look out!"

Unfortunately, the others are not quite fast enough. The limb smashes directly into Magnus and Taako, knocking the wind out of them both. It then wraps the limb around their stunned forms, picks them up, and slides them both thirty feet across the floor towards the entrance.

Taako recovers first and, with a light wave of one hand, casts Blink. He vanishes from the normal physical plane of existence, and reappears in the intangible ethereal one, where he can watch the events unfolding around him in shades of grey. Similar to watching a TV show, however, he can't affect the outcome in any physical way; his hand passes harmlessly right through anything he tries to touch.

"Taako!" Magnus shouts. He, for one, had no idea the elven wizard could teleport, or go invisible, or whatever the hell he just did, and as far as Magnus is concerned a little forewarning  _ would have been nice _ . "What the fuck!"

In the split second just after Taako's vision goes grey, he could swear he saw tiny grey figures with bright white eyes standing all around the room surveying the scene. But in the blink of an eye, they vanish, giving Taako not even enough time to discern what they  _ looked _ like, let alone what they were. They leave nothing behind in their wake, no trace of their existence, and honestly, Taako decides, it's entirely possible he just imagined the whole thing.

Merle casts Prayer of Healing on Magnus so he can instantly recover from the wounds sustained by the Whomping Willow tree branch; Magnus shakes off the lingering pain, grips Railsplitter, runs up to the gigantic tree, and chops it neatly in half. The axe passes through wood like a hot knife through water.

A resounding, creaking bellow competes with the ongoing siren for audible dominance as the tree falls straight backwards into the booths at the back of the lobby. Glass smashes. Receipts and ledgers go flying into the air. Trent props itself up on two giant, meaty tree fists, looks straight at Magnus standing in the basin of the fountain looking quite pleased with himself, and  _ screams _ , with sap dripping out of its mouth.

"Let me translate," says Merle, wincing at the deafening noise. "That means he aggressively is going to retaliate against you, and he is  _ probably _ going to cause you some kind of harm."

Magnus frowns. "But I chopped him in half."

"It's a  _ magic tree _ ."

Magnus brings his shield up and swings Railsplitter into Trent's trunk, causing another piercing sappy scream. Trent lifts itself up on two broad branches, swings itself closer so its gnarled face is right next to Magnus's, and whips one of its spikier branch arms right into Magnus's head; Magnus blocks with his shield and stumbles sideways with the force of the blow, as some of Trent's undoubtedly poisonous tree sap drips down onto his face over the edge of the shield.

Taako blinks back into the physical realm, raises his umbrella, and casts Scorching Ray. Three rays of bright orange flames scorch through the air towards the fallen magic tree; two of them miss in between branches, but one hits, catching the wood on fire. With that, Taako blinks right back into nonexistence.

The vines cracking the foundation in front of the fountain, coated in Trent's tree sap, begin to animate. Two of them rise up into the air like charmed snakes, rear back, and strike at Merle. One misses; the other wraps sharp, slippery spines around Merle's torso, rooting him to the spot. With his physical movement completely impeded and sharp stabs of pain blooming all up and down his body, Merle shoots Trent a fierce stare and casts his plant-and-animal-charming spell one last time, the better to facilitate some conversation.

"—  ** MY BUUUUUUUUUUUTT! NO! MY BUUUTT! AAAAARGH!AAAAAAARRRGGGHH… MY BUUUUTT…I WAS JUST BORN! AND THEN MY BUTT CAME OFF! HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME! I'LL KILL YOU ALL! I JUST GOT BORN, I'M A BABY, AND YOU CUT MY BUTT OFF! YOU CUT MY WHOLE BODY OFF MY BUTT!!" **

Conversation is facilitated, all right. Merle takes a deep breath. "I have the power to heal you!" he cries out, his voice magically enhanced into deep guttural grunts that sound something like if a massive tree were uprooted out of the ground.

" ** YOU CUT OFF MY —!" **

"Listen —"

" ** NO YOU LISTEN!! I DON'T HAVE A BUTT ANYMORE 'CAUSE YOU'RE ROLLING WITH SOME  _ GENUINE DICKS!" _ **

_ "I'm not with them _ ! I'm not with them!"

" ** YOU CAME INTO THE ROOM WITH THEM AND YOU HEALED ONE OF THEM BUD —" **

"I saw them attack you and I came in here and I said can't we just  _ talk _ to him? I just want to talk! I don't know who these guys are! I have Plant Growth, I can  _ heal you _ ."

" ** … … WHAT'S PLANT GROWTH." **

"Shhhh, shh shh, I know it hurts, I know he hurt your butt, and he's a bad,  _ bad _ man —"

" ** THE WORST MAN. I'VE ONLY MET FOUR MEN AND HE'S THE WORST OF THEM." **

"Here, I can do Plant Growth, and it will make your butt feel  _ good _ . … Oh god, I worded that wrong."

" ** FROM WHAT I'VE HEARD IT'S ACTUALLY SOMETHING YOU'RE VERY MUCH INTO." **

"Here, you can read this Extreme Teen Bible —"

" ** I CAN'T READ, I'M A PLANT!!! AND I'M LIKE THIRTY MINUTES OLD!!!" **

"No, no, listen — Taako can read it to you, and I can use Plant Growth —"

" ** AAAAAAAAAARGH…" **

"No, no, shhhhh, and make you  _ all _ —"

" ** THAT WAS A FART, I HAVE TO DO THOSE OUT OF MY MOUTH NOW, THANKS TO  _ YOUR FRIEND _ ." **

"OK, oh… wow."

" ** IT'S A REAL HORROR SHOW IN HERE. ** "

"Holy  _ shit _ , that's the  _ worst _ . No no no, it's not the worst. Oh, I guess —" Merle looks around for Taako, and doesn't see him anywhere, because Taako is sitting in the ethereal plane watching this unfold with an expression of deep disbelief on his face. "— I guess Magnus will have to read the bible to you, and I'll heal you."

Magnus looks at Merle. "I don't understand any of this," he says. "I'm hearing tree sounds coming out of your mouth."

Merle waves Magnus's words off, and Trent fixes Merle with a baleful stare. " ** ARE YOU GOING TO REATTACH ME TO MY OLD BUTT OR GROW A NEW ONE." **

"I will try to do that, but if I do — we have to stop this silly little conflict, and be buds! And you can  _ really _ be a bud! Get it?"

" ** LISTEN, I'M GOING TO GET KIND OF EXISTENTIAL NOW, I WAS BORN LIKE A MINUTE AGO AND I WAS PUT HERE TO STOP PEOPLE FROM GOING UPSTAIRS. HERE'S THE THING, I'M SAD ABOUT MY BUTT — WELL, I'M ANGRY ABOUT MY BUTT — SADNESS IS PART OF IT BUT I'LL HAVE LOTS OF TIME FOR SADNESS LATER -- BUT RIGHT NOW IT'S MAINLY JUST ANGER, AND HERE'S THE THING, I THINK I'M WINNING THIS FIGHT. I THINK I MIGHT BE ABLE TO BEAT YOU GUYS. ** "

Merle bites his lip. "The bad lady is the one who sent you down this path. Nobody else sicced you on your three best buds, right?"

** "THE BAD LADY GREW ME UP OUT OF THE GROUND OUT OF NOTHING!! LISTEN, I WANT A BUTT VERY BADLY SO I'LL TELL YOU WHAT. IF YOU GIVE ME MY BUTT BACK I'LL ONLY KILL YOUR FRIENDS. ** "

"Hmmm. You mean you'll let  _ me _ go?"

" ** YEAH. NOW REALLY THINK ABOUT IT. ** "

"I am! Believe me, I'm really thinking about it. You know, anybody that would hurt trees… I think they suck. They  _ suck _ ."

"Merle, what's he saying?" Magnus hisses. "Are we gonna get out of this one?"

" _ Chop him," _ Merle hisses back in Common out of the corner of his mouth. " _ Will you please freaking chop him!? I'm gonna keep talking to him, chop him!" _

" ** GUYS I ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND COMMON." **

" _ CHOP HIM!" _

Magnus rushes in, holding Railsplitter aloft. He chops once — twice — scoring large bits of wood off of Trent the Treant's trunk with each swing. Merle claps both hands over his mouth in an exaggerated expression of staged surprise. "Magnus! What did you  _ do _ ?"

Magnus looks over at him in confusion. "I — but you — but you said —"

"Magnus! Awwww, oh  _ no _ …"

" ** AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH ALRIGHT OK GUYS OK OK I'M THINKING ABOUT IT NOW, NOW I'M GIVING IT SOME SERIOUS CONSIDERATION, JUST THE WHOLE BACKING OFF AND LETTING BYGONES BE BYGONES THING. PLEASE, PLEASE DON'T, I HAVE KIDS -- I DON'T HAVE KIDS, I WAS JUST BORN, YOU KNOW THIS, I'M A BABY THOUGH, YOU WOULDN'T HURT A BABY WOULD YOU. WAAAAAAAAH. MOMMA MOMMA. PLEASE. PASS ME MY BINKY. ** "

"Is he dead yet?" Magnus asks Merle.

Merle shakes his head. "No, it's reminding me it was born thirty minutes ago and it's only a baby, and really, guys, I think that —"

Taako blinks back into existence right in front of the felled trunk. "So just born, huh?" he says, and casts Scorching Ray at Trent. "Welcome to Earf!"

One of the beams of fire cuts a line up the wall by the teller booths, cutting straight through Trent's biggest arm, which falls to the ground with a shattering  _ t h u n k. _ Another one of the rays hits Trent square in the chest — or the place where the chest  _ would _ be, if you transposed humanoid anatomy onto a tree trunk. The entirety of Trent disintegrates, as do the vines that were restraining Merle. 

Merle bursts into tears.

Magnus claps him on the shoulder. "Merle, we did great! Come on."

"I know, I know, it's just… I don't know, he was… so  _ young _ ."

"He hit me," Magnus points out. "Like, real hard."

"Yeah, I know, but you're a douchebag, and he was just so  _ young _ !"

"I miss him too," Taako chimes in awkwardly. "It was a him? That's fine. Is there any good gold or anything?" He walks over to the booths where Trent fell and smashed the bordering glass wall, climbs over some of the rubble, and disappears inside, leaving Magnus to comfort Merle. Barely two minutes later, he comes back out with a small black iron lockbox, which he graciously and considerately shows to the others, because he doesn't have any unlocking spells of any kind.

Magnus takes the box and slams it into the ground. It pops open, revealing 900 gold pieces and a small brass key with the Goldcliff Trust insignia on it.

"We can't take these," says Taako thoughtfully.

Magnus stares at him. "Yeah, we can. We totally can."

"No," says Taako, "listen —"

"No, insurance will cover it, it's fine."

"It's a bank."

"This is a victimless crime."

"We're not  _ looting _ , we're — we're literally stopping a bank robbery! Just because you found money in a bank doesn't mean that you can just take it with you! Why are we looting? This isn't a  _ dungeon _ , people do business here! Put that back!"

"Listen, Taako, the government's gonna pay this back."

"The government isn't gonna do anything! You'll get arrested, you'll go to jail! We literally talked to the chief of police, he's right outside!"

"Yeah, and you know  _ he _ would do this if he were here. 'Cause of the corruption in the militia."

"Magnus," Merle says somberly, "I think he's right."

"Of  _ course _ I'm right!" says Taako.

"Let's put the money back," Merle goes on, "and let's you and I spend all our energy looking for a door from the booths so we can continue on our quest like good adventurers."

Magnus divides his incredulous stare between them both. "Merle, you know Taako's going to steal the money for himself, right? How do you think he got the pocket spa? I know where this is going, we've been down this road before."

"You don't know I have a pocket spa," Taako mutters under his breath. "You don't know me."

"We were  _ in _ your spa last week!"

"Uh… oh yeah, you've been in it. You know what, OK, fine. You can split the money fifty fifty if you guys want, but I swear to  _ god _ first thing I do when I get outside is rat you out."

Magnus takes a deep breath. "Listen. I'm just taking it so that  _ The Raven _ doesn't take it. We can maybe use it to negotiate with her, and then return it to Captain Captain Bain when we get out."

Taako eyes Magnus skeptically. "So you're taking it for safekeeping, and then conveniently forgetting about it later."

" _ Yes. _ "

"Got it. That's morally grey, I can live with that."

~~~~

There's a door to a staircase on the left of the lobby, as well as a sturdy elevator door standing slightly ajar. Taako tries the key from the lockbox in the slot next to the elevator door, and the panel buttons light up. 

_ BING BONG. _

The door opens onto an elevator with glass walls and a glass bottom. The ceiling is a sturdier opaque metal with lights inset, but the elevator chute is  _ also _ glass, giving them a nice view over the city of Goldcliff outside — or it would, if the building wasn't encased in giant, quivering, thorny vines. The panel on the inside of the elevator has 19 buttons arranged in neat rows, and a twentieth button on top that simply says V.

"You guys're gonna have to do this," says Merle, "because I can only reach up to the tenth floor."

"Nah," says Taako, "I'm gonna take the stairs."

Magnus gestures wildly. "What —? But —?"

"I'm trying to slim down. Lose the LBs. I might be back on TV someday, I never know, so I gotta… you know, slim down."

There's a brief pause.

"We'll race," Magnus decides.

Taako nods. "Yeah, that'll be fun."

"OK, I'll see you on the second floor."

The elevator door slides shut as Taako heads for the staircase, and Merle gives Magnus a confused look. "When was he on TV before?"

"He had a cooking show, remember?"

"Oh. Uh, no."

The elevator comes to a halt at the second floor and the doors slide open once again; Taako appears and, with a swagger that hides how winded one flight of stairs made him, joins them in the elevator. "Listen," he says, "guys, I think we should go to the one marked V, so I'm gonna hop in there with ya. Make room for your boy."

"But what if there's something on all the floors?" Magnus asks.

"We gotta make sure," Merle agrees, and hops out. "I'll go up the stairs."

"OK, cool. You check every floor, we're gonna head on up to the vault."

"Every floor," Merle says, nodding. "You guys go up in the elevator, and since I'm the smallest, and, you know, the shortest legs —"

"Sounds great."

" _ And _ you'd be the funniest if you fall down the stairs," Taako points out with a grin.

"That  _ would _ be funny," says Merle. "I'd make noises. Bing boo bin boom boom…"

"Wait a minute." Magnus passes Merle one of the three Stones of Farspeech he bought at the Fantasy Costco two adventures before. "There you go."

"Thanks." Merle pockets the stone, briefly considers putting the Scuttle Buddy in the elevator with the others, remembers that he left the Scuttle Buddy in the train when the train was destroyed, and begins ascending the stairs with an abruptly heavy heart.

The elevator moves up, giving a satisfying  _ ting _ with each floor, until it reaches the space between floors 11 and 12. Here it jerks to a shuddering halt, and a few seconds later the lights above them wink out. 

"This bodes well," Magnus mutters.

The vines outside the exterior glass wall begin to move with a slow and worrying purpose, encircling the entire building, constricting tighter and tighter until they shatter the elevator shaft and close around the elevator car itself. Below, vines break in to the shaft through the first floor and rise up like water, as though someone decided to pour a pit of snakes into the shaft. 

Within the building, Merle scales the stairs in a sprightly manner, humming obliviously optimistic things to himself with every step. "Love the stairs!" he sings every so often. "Whee!"

"Magnus," Taako says, staring up at the ceiling of the car. "Can you knock that panel out? Can you use, I dunno, Phantom Fist, or… your hand?"

"Yeah, probably." Magnus Phantom Fists up into the ceiling, and the panel pops off the hatch completely, sailing down into the vines below. "Come here, I'll lift you out," he offers, eyeing the vines all around them.

"Unnecessary, my man." Taako grins the grin of a wizard who's about to pull some  _ very _ dope shit, takes a long coil of sturdy rope out of his satchel, and, with a flourish of his umbrella, he casts Rope Trick. The rope stretches up, up into the elevator shaft, up to its full length of sixty feet, and it tethers itself in an alternate dimension to hang, loosely but firmly, right into the open hatch of the elevator car.

"Are you ready," he asks Magnus, "to go into another dimension with me."

Magnus gasps. " _ So _ ready!"

"Good, 'cause we're not. We're gonna start climbing, because that way we won't die, and we're gonna keep going until we can find a way out. An egress, if you will.  _ I _ feel confident we're going to find one."

Magnus peers out at the vines rising quickly up the elevator shaft below them.

"If we can climb up a foot, just, you know, to the next level," Taako goes on, "maybe then Merle —" He pulls out his Stone of Farspeech. "Merle, do you read me?"

"Ten-four, good buddy!" Merle's voice says from the stone, sounding somehow tinnier than his usual gruff vocalisations. "Come back, rocking chair!"

"Oh, OK. People listen to these, so that seems —"

"Cab-over Pete with the reefer on —"

"Ohh, no."

"— and a Jimmy haulin' haul!"

"Oh golly. Oh… golly."

"OK, well," says Magnus, "we're gonna die."

Merle chuckles, sounding very pleased with himself. "Now what did you want, there, good buddy, come on?"

"Merle," Taako cuts him off, "shut up. Meet us on the twelfth floor. As fast as your stupid little legs can carry you."

"Roger that!"

"OK, great. And once you get up there, try to find a way to get the doors open."

"Okey-dokey."

"Excellent." Taako slips the stone back into its pocket and tugs on the rope. "Rope triiick~"

Merle, true to his word, climbs as fast as he can towards floor 12, but he's notably slower than when he started. Running up ten flights of stairs will do that to you. Meanwhile, Taako begins trying to climb the rope, but his first attempt ends with him solidly on the floor hissing in pain and nursing some minor rope burn on his hands. 

"I'm flashing back to gym class over here, gang," he mutters darkly. 

Magnus tries next, and, predictably, he has no trouble whatsoever climbing up out of the elevator car. His muscles barely even bulge. He reaches back down to grasp Taako's arm — and just in time, because the elevator car, with a screeching shudder, is pulled down by the encircling vines and crushed like a tin can beneath them. Taako dangles from Magnus's hand in the middle of the shaft, staring down at his bypassed death, speechless, while Magnus tries not to show how damn close he came to letting his friend go — supporting someone's full weight so suddenly without warning when you're dangling from a rope yourself isn't exactly  _ easy _ . He eyes the top of the rope above them, around floor 17 or so, just visible hanging from a black hole in space. Merle better be nearly there, he thinks, because there's no way Magnus is climbing 60 feet with the dead weight of Taako hanging off of him.

Fortunately, Merle reaches the twelfth floor at last, heaving for breath, and kicks open the staircase access door with a bang so loud that Magnus and Taako can hear it, even in the broken elevator shaft.

"Open the door!" Magnus yells.

"What?"

" _ Open the door _ !"

"Open  _ what _ door?"

"The — the  _ elevator _ door!!"

"Why are you yelling through the door when we can talk through the Stones of Farspeech!"

"Oh, right, hold on, one sec — I can't fucking  _ reach _ it, Merle! We're about to die!  _ Open the door _ !"

Vines swarm down the room Merle is in from the other end of the building, blindly reaching through broken furniture and gaping doorways, filling up the entire space much more quickly than is strictly fair. Merle gives them a brief look, pulls a small crowbar out of his adventurer's kit — Emmanuel the Crowbar, he decides — and wedges it into the elevator door. With a mighty dwarven heave, the two sides of the door come apart.

A wave of vines crash down the hall and knock Merle tumbling into the elevator shaft. He reaches up and grabs Taako's hand at the last second, sending all three adventurers swinging dangerously around the shaft, as Emmanuel the Crowbar falls down to its viney death in the wriggling vines below.

The strain sure shows in Magnus's muscles  _ now.  _ "Could either one of you grab the rope now, please?" he asks them through gritted teeth.

Neither of them do. They can't, without climbing over Magnus himself. For the moment, at least, it appears they're at an impasse — a cliffhanger, if you will — surrounded by the deadly vines reaching for them with each passing second.


	3. Hanging By A Moment Here With You

Goonies never say die

But storytellers do…

…  ** It's T _he Adventure Zone. _ **

~~~~

When last we left off on this thorny adventure, Magnus, Taako, and Merle were hanging off a rope suspended in the middle of a broken elevator shaft, hanging on by the thread of whatever the rope is tethered to in the black hole sixty feet above them. Magnus grips the very end of the rope. Taako hangs on to Magnus's ankle with one hand. Merle, in turn, is grasping Taako's ankle. If any of the finer details of this situation are different from where the cliffhanger left the three adventurers, it's entirely because the strain of hanging on for dear life has made them slip, and absolutely not because any of the Powers That Be misremembered any of those finer details.

A bed of living vines, wriggling furiously, continues to fill the shaft beneath them. It's only two floors down, at this stage, and Merle is completely out of Talk-To-Plants juice. Maybe, as Magnus and Taako are both quick to point out, he should think twice in the future before using any of his valuable spell slots for  _ sexing up vines _ .

"Merle," Magnus says, the strain evident in his voice. "You climb Taako, and then climb me. And then Taako, you climb me. And then we'll all climb the rope."

"This is a bad plan," Taako mutters — not that he has any better ones.

"Taako, couldn't you cast Levitate, or make somebody lighter, so I can Andre the Giant this shit?"

"Noooooo."

"OK! Asked and answered, I suppose!"

Taako laughs. "I'm out of spell slots, Magnus!"

"Oh. OK. You guys want to just, like, take an extended rest on this rope, or… what's the deal?"

" _ I _ want to climb your body," Merle says.

"Oh,  _ god _ ."

"Hey, it was your suggestion!"

The vines writhe only fifteen feet below them, pressing in on all sides. With the opportunity for argument  _ very  _ much past, Merle starts making his slow way up Taako's suspended form, and then Magnus's, doing a little tickle-climbing manouevre like some sort of prankster goat scaling the sheer face of a mountain, until finally he makes it to the free rope above Magnus, and he scales several feet up with his entire body wrapped around the thin lifeline to make room for Taako.

"Your turn, Taako," says Magnus. " _ Climb my frame _ ."

Taako takes a moment to steel himself — he's not the strongest wizard around, but at least Magnus won't give him rope-burn — and then starts climbing. He manages surprisingly well, until he puts one errant hand on Magnus's belt, and the belt comes undone. 

Taako slips and falls with a "Whoopsy-doopsie!", pulling Magnus's pants down to his ankles with him. Magnus instinctively and entirely without his own permission kicks out to prevent his pants from slipping off over his shoes, and as a result, Taako loses his grip on Magnus's pants to plummet towards the bed of vines below.

It's a soft landing. There's even a pleasing little give in the vegetation, like some sort of lethal but comfortable hammock. Taako doesn't give himself any time to enjoy it, though, because the moment vines begin to catch on his limbs, he casts Blink, and he vanishes completely from view.

The physical plane and the ethereal plane don't layer perfectly on top of each other. That's an extremely important fact, and one that Taako takes full advantage of. Slipping into the ethereal plane puts him about ten feet  _ above _ where he was about to be swallowed up by vines, where he floats easily in the ethereal air, untouched by reality or any of reality's dangers.

"Why didn't you just do that  _ before you pulled my pants off _ !?" Magnus demands of the empty physical air, swinging gently with his legs and genitals on full display.

The vines below snap angrily and continue to grow up the shaft towards the rope.

"Magnus," Merle calls down to his friend. "Why don't you swing back and forth, and maybe I can make the jump to the door up here!"

"Is there something for you to hang onto?"

"No, but — if you swing us back and forth, like a pendulum, I can get close enough to whack it."

"OK!"

Magnus does exactly that, swinging back and forth to give Merle some momentum. Merle hefts his warhammer off his back, waits until each swing brings him within whacking distance of the door on floor 13, and then  _ whacks _ it as he yells something aggressive and threatening in Dwarven. The metal door dents, but doesn't give, and just visible through the crack in the middle of the door are a  _ lot _ of thick, green, undulating vines.

One of the vines from the rising bed beneath them rises up like a charmed snake towards Magnus's pants around his ankles. It rears back, strikes — Magnus lifts his legs into an impressive curled hunch, and it misses. "Listen," he calls up to Merle, "it's time to climb this rope! Get up it, motherfuckers!"

Merle climbs. Magnus climbs. Taako blinks back into the physical plane another ten feet above where the  _ ethereal _ plane put him, which is where the free bit of rope above Magnus is, and he coils immediately around the rope with all of his limbs like some sort of humanoid snake so he can slither on up towards floor 14. Which, honestly, had  _ better _ be completely clear of vines, because he may be a master of sweet flips, but he's not going to go flipping down to his doom like some sort of novice trapeze artist.

Fortunately, that doesn't happen. After a quick bit of discussion, Taako and Merle work together to swing the rope back and forth so Magnus below them gets some momentum ("Baaaaack…! Fooooorth…! Baaaaaack…! Fooooorth…!), and the pendulum swing of the rope, combined with Phantom Fist, smashes through the elevator doors so effectively that the doors blow backwards several feet into the corridor. Magnus rolls in on top of them, and Taako and Merle tumble in after.

"And thus, the elevator battle ends," Magnus says triumphantly as he pulls his pants back up. "We did it! High five."

Floor 14 is clearly where the boring business gets done, because there are rows and rows of cubicles visible all the way down the room. Water coolers and motivational posters break up the monotony here and there. Mercifully, there isn't a vine anywhere in sight, apart from outside the windows blocking all the sunlight.

Right as Tres Horny Boys bicker about whether or not to bypass the entire boring floor and every singly undoubtedly boring floor above it — they haven't seen any civilians or valuables, after all — a giant Venus flytrap bursts into the corridor from the elevator shaft. Magnus takes one look at it, screams " _ Run!"  _ and the three adventurers take off into the stairwell, drawing on new reserves of energy to take the steps three at a time all the way up to the very top floor where the Vault — and, most likely, the Raven — await them.

~~~~

The stairwell ends at the 20th floor and opens up onto a small, dome-shaped room, smaller than the other floors Taako, Magnus, and Merle have found themselves on. On the far wall is a large circular window overlooking the city, caked in thin leafy vegetation but equally bathed in sunlight. On the left side of the room is a large hole in the wall, and next to that is a giant, heavy, iron door that has clearly been ripped out of its customary pride of place and tossed unceremoniously aside. All around it are strewn papers, sacks of sparkling gold, countless iron lockboxes, and a carpet of vines spread out in a wriggling layer from the gaping vault doorway. 

Standing over the mess, overlooking the financial destruction, is a slender half-elf woman wearing black armour and a black feathered mask over her entire face resembling a raven. Around her waist is a belt woven from brown reeds, clashing badly with the rest of her black ensemble.

"Guys," says Taako, immediately drawing her attention over to them. "We're looking for someone named The Raven.  _ She's _ got a raven mask. So what I'm saying is… maybe she's a fan."

"Hey," Magnus mutters to them, without taking his eyes off the woman. "Remember what happened to Gundren when he put on the glove and went a little, like… batshit cuckoo? That's… that's probably going on here, so, you know, we can  _ try _ talking to her and everything, but —"

"You shouldn't be here," the Raven says.

Magnus immediately turns on the jovial charm. "Hey! Hail and well met!"

"The three of you shouldn't  _ be _ here."

"It — uh — oh. Um, we didn't see any signs or anything. The door was open. So we just came in!"

"The door was covered by vines — it's not safe for the three of you to  _ be _ here!"

"We didn't — ! Did  _ you _ guys see vines — ?" asks Magnus. "Like,  _ I _ didn't see any vines. There were no vines."

Taako and Merle both immediately nod and make a lot of thoughtful noises. "Mhm, nope, no, not us," they agree.

"I can make the vines pull back and give you an exit from the building," the Raven persists, "but you need to go  _ right now _ , it's not safe."

"We were gonna refinance," Taako says with a small shrug. "Really need to get that done."

"Or else the bank's going to take our farm," Magnus adds.

"Yeah, it'll foreclose on our farm we own together."

"When I'm done with this bank," says the Raven, "there won't be anything left for them to give out. Your finances are lost, but your lives can be saved, just  _ go _ . Go!"

"Raven," Magnus says, "may I take a shot in the dark here? Is there — do you have some beef with this bank? Outside of just, like, stealing the money, 'cause it seems like there's money all over the ground here that you  _ could _ be taking, but you seem to be ignoring it in favour of… something else?"

"I don't have any  _ need _ for money anymore. I've become…" She laughs a little. "I have become unto a  _ god _ ."

"Cool, cool."

Taako casts Sleep. It fails miserably, apart from drawing the attention of everyone in the room, and he gives them all a little wave. "Ignore me! I was just practicing."

The Raven pulls a thorny whip out from behind her. "OK," she says, her voice abruptly hard, "I gave you the opportunity to leave. I didn't  _ want _ to hurt you —"

"Raven," Magnus interrupts, abandoning all humour, "we've seen something like this happen before, and the  _ last _ time one of these articles —" He points to her belt. "— was in the hands of someone —"

"There is  _ nothing _ like this belt in the world, trust me."

"Yeah, well, there was. There was this gauntlet. It levelled a whole city. Thousands of people  _ died _ because the person wearing it didn't listen to us."

"I can control what this is!" the Raven insists. "I'm not worried!"

"No,  _ it's _ controlling  _ you _ . Look at yourself! Have you  _ seen _ the outside of the building? There's thousands of vines, everywhere!"

"Yeah, it's pretty cool! I — yes, I agree, it's totally rad."

"No, this is  _ shit _ ."

The Raven shakes her head. "I'm not going to give up the belt. Part of me wishes I could! But I'm  _ telling _ you, there is literally  _ no way _ I can give up this belt. I  _ need _ it —"

"— or your pants will fall down," says Magnus, "I  _ get _ it. My pants fell down a little bit earlier. We've all  _ been _ there. You lose a little weight, or you buy pants that you  _ thought _ looked really good but you knew they were two sizes too big when you bought them and you said to yourself, I can cinch this, maybe get them tailored…"

"When I'm done here," says the Raven, the smile completely gone from her face, "I'm going to level this building to the ground. And the three of you  _ don't want to be here _ when that happens. Leave. Now."

"We can't leave, OK?" Taako tells her flatly. "We won't get paid if we leave."

"That's not my problem."

"Look over there!" Magnus shouts, and then charges her.

"Oh goodie," Taako murmurs, his tone and face still flat, as he watches Magnus rushing in to the fight. "This is  _ exactly _ how I was hoping this would play out."

The Raven points her free hand at them and casts Thunder Wave; the thunderous wave of force catches Magnus full in the chest while he charges, and clips both Taako and Merle behind him. All three adventurers fly back and crash into the wall, with latent sparks of electricity dancing across their hair and clothes. Not one of them manages to get up following  _ that _ blow, not even Magnus, who's pretty sure he's broken some ribs and has some fuckoff amounts of internal bleeding, but Taako has definitely and obviously been fully knocked unconscious. Half his face is bloody, and he doesn't move.

The Raven brandishes her whip and aims it at Merle with the magical accompaniment of the spell Thorn Whip. Magnus struggles to make it there quickly enough to defend his friend, and just isn't fast enough; the whip wraps around Merle's torso and rips through his flesh, leaving long bloody tracks in his clothes and armour. Merle makes no sound in the aftermath of the attack, and lies worryingly still.

"OK, listen!" Magnus cries. "We might have been a bit hasty with the smiting!"

The Raven looks next at Magnus, who's still struggling to keep his balance, and sends a vicious Thorn Whip spell in  _ his _ direction. He manages to dodge part of it, but there are still bloody furrows in his arm when he charges at the Raven again, his face a grim mask of determination. The Raven claps her hands and a tremendous gust of wind knocks Magnus off-kilter, but he dives through it on the drug of pure adrenaline and slashes Railsplitter into her right shoulder.

The Raven blinks down at the sight of the axe's head buried into her leather armour, looking surprised. A chunk of the armour, stained with green blood, falls to the floor. 

Magnus rears back, winding up for another swing while the Raven is distracted — and then he makes a wild grab for her belt instead. Unfortunately, his fingers only just manage to  _ brush _ the woven brown reeds when what feels like ten thousand volts of electricity shoot through his body. The Raven's eyes, in the instant where Magnus can see them through the slits of her raven mask, glow bright blue, and Magnus goes flying backwards on a wave of electric force strong enough to shake the very foundations of the vault. He lands in a crumpled and broken heap next to Merle and Taako, barely hanging on to consciousness.

The Raven holds up her thundery hand and points it straight at Magnus. A flash splits the air, but before she can get off her lethal shot, the large circular window in the back of the room blasts open, raining shards of glass across half of the floor, successfully distracting her; and rappelling down from the top of the building, swinging in through that broken window, is a halfling woman wearing what looks like a karategi and a bright silver Goldcliff Militia badge. 

She's small in stature, but she's incredibly fast. She rolls to her feet, holds up one hand in a flat-palm strike, her other hand in a pre-chop motion; then she stands there, perfectly balanced, and shouts: "Sloane! Sloane, you're not a killer!"

Magnus points weakly at Taako and Merle, but neither of the women seem to notice.

The Raven looks at the halfling woman without saying a word. A tense moment passes; then she transforms into a grey stormcloud, a small hurricane of wind and thunder that spins past the halfling woman and disappears out the broken window into the sky outside.

"Well," Magnus says, his voice hoarse in the still air, "another successful battle, gentlemen. Well done."

Neither Taako nor Merle answer, because they're both too busy almost dying. The halfling woman rushes over to where the three of them lie on the cold marble floor. "Can you walk?" she asks.

Magnus shakes his head. "Absolutely not."

The woman claps her hands and rubs them together, channelling magical energy through them, and that's the last thing Magnus remembers for a good long while.


	4. Road Racer

Hey everyone this is Mark

I'm filling in for the usual guy who took his family on vacation

I think they went to Dollywood…

…  ** It's T _he Adventure Zone. _ **

~~~~

Hazy half-memories tell Magnus that he, Merle, and Taako were rescued from the vault by the halfling woman who saved their lives against the Raven, and that the three of them are now lying on gurneys in a first-aid recovery tent back on ground level outside the Goldcliff Trust, having their wounds gently healed through magical means. They're  _ extremely _ hazy memories, though, and Magnus would not have been surprised to wake up and find that he was dead. He almost thinks he is, staring up at the bright white canvas ceiling, until he hears the murmur of medical talk all around him.

The vines on the building don't move anymore. As the minutes pass, they all turn grey, and shrivel up, and peel off the walls to fall harmlessly to the ground below.

"Well, you guys look worse for wear," says Captain Captain Bain, sitting beside them.

"Wait a minute," says Taako, lifting one arm straight up into the air above him. "I do not want to continue this adventure, and get caught up in all your magical entanglements, until it's clarified to me that we're not dead, and that Merle and I are both back up to full spell slots."

Bain pauses. "You're not dead," he says.

"Fantastic."

"What  _ happened _ to you guys? You look like dirt."

"We got attacked by weeds," Magnus answers, pushing himself up to a sitting position.

"That'll happen," Bain says with a nod, "that'll happen. I knew that was a risk when I sent you boys in there."

"She was  _ very _ strong."

"Oh yeah, yeah, for sure."

"Like, it was like…  _ silly _ , we were not… even  _ close _ , it was not a fair match-up. It would be like if the kids from Mighty Ducks were to take on the Monstars, but in like, hockey."

Taako gingerly sits up. "You know I hate to corrupt anybody's metaphor," he says, "but — I think the Ducks could stand a good shot there! I mean — we have no guarantee the Monstars even know how to skate, for starters…"

"I think the question would be, do the Mighty Ducks still have Emilio Estavez, and do the Monstars have an equivalently inspiring coach? Could they do it with the coach from Iceland?"

"What in the hell are you two talking about," Bain says.

Taako heaves a sigh. "Listen, that was pretty scary. Like, honestly, she's… really scary, I don't know how we're supposed to —"

Bain leans forward. "Tell me exactly what happened. Did she just start wailing on you as soon as you saw her?"

"Yeah!"

"Well, no," says Magnus uncomfortably. Taako gives him an offended look. "I think there might have been some talk of smiting."

"There was more nuance, I guess," Taako admits grudgingly.

"Yeah! Maybe  _ we _ made the first move, maybe  _ she _ made the first move, who can say?"

Bain frowns in confusion. "Hold on, she didn't — she didn't just  _ attack _ you as soon as she saw you?"

"No," says Magnus. "She actually told us that we should probably go, you know, that we should leave. She seemed concerned about our safety."

"It was more of a body language thing," Merle pipes up from his gurney, where he, very slowly, is still working on achieving full consciousness.

"I mean, there  _ was _ a lot of threatening behaviour going on," Magnus says defensively. "There were  _ vines _ around, maybe somebody's pants got pulled down, a  _ lot _ of stuff happened."

"That is peculiar," says Bain with a thoughtful stroke of his chin. He turns to the other medics milling around. "Hey, can I have the tent, please?"

"Where do you want it?" one of the medics asks him.

Bain scowls. "Ha ha, smartass. Get out."

Once the medics have left the tent, and Bain is alone with the three Reclaimers, he drops his head into his hands with a sigh. "This is, uh… this is unprecedented. I never considered the possibility that one of these Grand Relics could end up in the hands of… like, a  _ good person _ , like a good-natured, good-hearted person."

Taako looks at Bain, intrigued in spite of himself. "You mean she wasn't always like this?"

"Here's the thing," says Bain. "The power that these items grant you can corrupt you so completely that you just completely lose control of that power. The fact that she didn't outright  _ kill _ you makes me think that she's… somehow trying to resist the thrall of this Grand Relic."

"That's weird," says Taako, "because she seemed like she was… buying into it, almost? Like she was consciously into the thrall, but she was aware that she was  _ in _ a thrall."

Bain shakes his head. "We need to know more about the Raven, if we're going to take her down. Fortunately, I think we may have an in-road there — "

"Captain, may I ask you a question?" Magnus asks. "In your knowledge, has there ever been someone who has held one of these Relics and  _ not _ been corrupted over a period of time, eventually?"

"I mean, all we have to go on is historical evidence from before the wars."

"The long  _ long _ ago?" Magnus asks with a weak smile.

"The long long ago," Bain confirms seriously. "The long forgotten. And unfortunately, no, a hundred percent of the time somebody gets their hands on one of these powers, and  _ regardless _ of their intentions, they lose control. Now, it's possible that maybe she's still early on in her corruption, but it's hard to say. We don't have a lot of modern data to go off of."

"I have heard tell of one very powerful wizard," Taako says, "who was able to resist the thrall of the gauntlet. I don't know if you've heard his name from the legend, he's — yes, it's me, T to the double A ko. Taako. No bigs. You've probably heard already. You've probably heard my inspirational CD, 'Grab the Gauntlet and Don't Look Back: The Taako Story'."

"Are you telling me you actually  _ equipped _ the gauntlet?"

"No, don't be stupid! I put it in my bag, with my snacks!"

" _ That's _ what I'm talking about," says Bain. "I have a phrase that I like to use, around the Bureau of Balance, and that is — once you pop, the corruption and power-drunkenness do not stop."

"Kind of cumbersome," Merle comments.

"It is, a little bit, it has a bad mouth-feel. But I'm working on it. Back to my original point: we have an in-road, if we want to get more information on the Raven. And it's my lieutenant — Lieutenant Hurley. Your saviour. I've suspected for a long time that she has some sort of involvement with the Raven."

"Oh yeah," Magnus remembers. "She called her by name."

"She did? What was her name?"

"I… don't remember."

"Oh. Well, that might have been handy for my investigation, but…"

"I think it was Susan?"

"Margaret," says Merle. "I think it was Margaret."

"Susan-Margaret," Magnus decides. "It was hyphenated."

"Oprah?" Taako suggests. "Maybe Oprah. Was it Oprah?"

"Susan-Margaret-Oprah."

"You  _ have _ confirmed my suspicion," Bain commends them. "So I want the three of you to talk to Lieutenant Hurley. I've tried to bring this up with her in the past, but, you know, there's all kinds of HR implications. So the three of you, talk to her and see what can get from her about the Raven."

"OK," says Magnus.

"Sure," says Taako. "Where's she at?"

"Probably right outside this tent. That'd be pretty handy if you didn't have to go around looking for her and she was just right there."

"That  _ would _ be nice," agrees Magnus.

"OK."

"Send her in!"

"Perfect security!" says Merle. "Canvas! That holds all the sound in."

"It's better than standing outside!" Magnus argues. "It's hot out there! There's the smell of rotting vines! It's not a good look!"

Lieutenant Hurley, the halfling monk woman who saved the three adventurers from the Raven's attacks in the vault, is not, in fact, standing right outside the tent. Despite Magnus's protests, they end up stepping outside to look for her once the medics deem them all fit to stand up. Fortunately they don't need to look all that far, because she's standing only a few dozen yards away, tending to two militiamen who were swallowed up by the vines during the attack on the bank. As they watch, she claps her hands, rubs them together to build up a static charge, and then she places her hands on the most grievous wounds. Radiant light spills between her fingers, and then the wounds are simply gone when she lifts her hands again.

"Did you see that, fellas?" says Magnus. "She Miyagi-ed the  _ shit _ out of those guys."

"Ma'am, could you step over here for a second?" Taako calls to her. "I think they'll be fine, we have to move our quest forward, you know how it goes."

Hurley moves over to join them, a weary smile on her face. "I'm glad to see that the three of you are doing better," she tells them. "She did quite a number on you, huh?"

Magnus nods. "Yes. Thank you so much for touching us."

"… Yeeeeah, that's kind of a weird way of putting it, but you're welcome."

"No, really, I like that you touched us, it felt good. Thank you."

"OK! You are… quite welcome. I've got to ask — did she say anything? Before I came to your rescue, all deus-ex-machina style?"

Taako answers her. "Yeah, she seemed concerned about us, as weird as that sounds. For somebody who's in the thrall of, like, a magic belt."

Hurley frowns. "Hold on, what did you… what did you just…? You kind of broke up there. What just happened?"

"Oh! Oh, I have a — stutter."

"That wasn't a  _ stutter _ , that was like — it's almost like you started talking in … fuzz, or something. What  _ was _ that?"

"I… I, um… I'm part robot. Sometimes when my action winds down, my talking centre stops working as good. It's hard to explain to a layman."

Hurley studies him. "You're some sort of… automated golem, you're saying?"

"No! Just part-golem, you know, like… Tick Tock. But part-man! And all-wizard. Actually, elf, and no-man! So anywho, yeah, she seemed concerned about us, which is weird for somebody who is, um… seems to be as angry? As she does?"

Hurley looks away for a moment, and then gives them a sad smile. "I don't think it's that weird at all, actually."

"What do you know about her, Hurley?"

"I — how did you know my name?"

"Captain Captain Bain told us."

"Oh. Well, I've… investigated her. I've tried to bust her, you know? I just — when I see a perp, I'm just like, I gotta bust 'em!"

Hurley is a great many things, but a great liar is not one of them. Magnus sounds uncharacteristically gentle when he says: "Lieutenant Hurley, you knew her real name."

"Yeah, that was just something I picked up, in my investigation. I've actually gotta go, because I — oh, hold on, I think I see a perp over there, gotta go, guys!"

Merle casts Zone of Truth. Magnus and Taako both recognise the signs of the magical field by now, and the way it subtly influences their thoughts; but Hurley, none the wiser, turns to leave them, until Magnus steps confidently into her way.

"So," he says cheerfully, "where's the Raven?"

"I don't — I don't know where the Raven is," says Hurley. "I  _ wish  _ I knew."

"What's your relationship to the woman that was up in the tower with us?" Merle shrewdly asks.

"We were partners. We — we were, uh… what have — what's going on? I feel dizzy." She stops. "What did you all do to me?"

"It's my cologne," says Merle. "Go on."

"Yeah, we were, um… we worked together. I was trying to apprehend her for a while, and then we started to…" Hurley sighs, and appears to give up fighting the truth zone magic. "We became very close."

"Lieutenant Hurley," says Magnus, "we reacted rashly when we met the Raven in the vault. In the future, the next time we meet, we want to  _ help _ her. She's in danger. We need to know  _ everything _ you know about her, so that we can convince her to let us help."

Hurley stares at the three of them, hope and mistrust openly warring on her face. "What is — what do any of  _ you _ want from the Raven?"

"We are good men, who are trying to help, and that's all we can say."

"I'm not a human," Taako reminds Magnus.

"We're good… people?"

"Yeah — no. Not people."

"We're good… beings?"

Taako nods with satisfaction. "Chaotic good, some of us."

"Listen, I want to help her too," says Hurley, "and I think I've come up with a way." She pauses, looking at them all, until hope eventually wins out. "I'm going to need some help, though. Come with me."

~~~~

They follow Hurley at a brisk pace through the winding streets of Goldcliff until they find themselves in a seedier area outside of the shiny, golden, and well-tended infrastructure of the business district. Hurley leads them to a small garage just off a wide alleyway, where she lifts the heavy sliding door easily to allow them access inside, and inside is — an oddly well-organised and clean space, very much at odds with the general run-down appearance of the outside of the garage. Some vehicle parts are scattered across the garage, no doubt pulled from a broken husk of a wagon in the corner, while taking pride of place in the middle is a large wagon-shaped object covered by a huge brown tarp.

There's also a harpoon attached to the broken wagon in the corner. Taako eyes it with curiosity as they spread out to explore the garage. If he didn't know any better, he'd say it makes the wagon it's attached to look almost like a  _ battle _ wagon.

"Well," says Magnus, " _ this _ is obviously associated with that racing we saw on our way into town."

"Oh, you're familiar with those races?" Hurley glances at him, surprised. 

"Oh yeah. Big fans. It's huge. I love it.  _ Real _ good stuff."

"Myself and — the Raven — our relationship began —" Hurley stops and shakes her head. "You know what, her name is Sloane. I'm just going to call her Sloane, because I'm uncomfortable calling her the Raven, I hope that's OK."

"Is 'the Raven' something that happened  _ recently _ , or when she was like… doing her stealing with you?" asks Taako.

"Oh, we didn't do stealing together."

"OK. But she was the Raven recently? Since she seemed to get meaner? And more powerful? Or was she the Raven before?"

Hurley sighs. "Well, she was technically the Raven before. Let me show you."

She pries one of her cabinets open and pulls out a box filled with the same sort of raven masks Sloane was wearing in the vault. Magnus immediately takes one and tries it on. 

"Oh, don't do that," Hurley says very quickly. "That's, uh, that's really uncomfortable for me. If you could actually take that off?"

Magnus makes some raven noises,  _ then _ takes it off, and hands it back to her with a wide smile. 

"Thanks," says Hurley, seemingly immune to Magnus's roguish charms. "So, let me explain from the beginning. I was in charge of pursuing Sloane when she was a small-time criminal, and little did I know that she was actually a battle wagon racer. If you live in Goldcliff, you're familiar with battle wagons. They're the favourite sport of the rich and famous here. They're races that happen in the desert, on the outskirts of town, and you place bets on them if you're a moneyed individual. They can be brutal blood sports from time to time, but most people just turn a blind eye to that, because the powerful people who run this city can't live without them. So I discovered that Sloane was a battle wagon racer, and she was so  _ good _ , and I was sort of… I was seduced by racing, and the two of us started to work together."

Hurley reaches into the cabinet for another box and dumps it on the workbench. Several masks shaped like rams' heads spill out, complete with spiralled horns. Magnus starts to reach for one, and Hurley deftly slaps his hand out of the way. 

"She went by 'The Raven'," Hurley explains, "and I went by 'The Ram'. It's customary for battle wagon racers to be anonymous, so that the people watching don't know who you are, because you  _ are _ technically committing a crime."

Taako stares. "Were you doing this  _ while _ you were a cop?"

"Yeah. I mean, again, people like to turn a blind eye — hence the masks, I didn't want anybody knowing I was  _ technically _ breaking the law."

"So it's only  _ mildly  _ illegal," Magnus says.

"It's illegal, but it's… so  _ exciting _ . And I'm  _ super _ good at it. And listen, if you don't hurt anybody, and we  _ never  _ did, we ran clean… it's not  _ really _ against the law. You're just going really fast!"

Taako nods in full agreement. "When did things start to break bad?"

"Things started to break bad about a month ago. I can't explain it, I still don't understand what was going on, but… the Raven started to develop these superhuman godlike powers, and…"

"… and that seemed  _ weird _ , at  _ first _ ," says Magnus, brow raised skeptically.

"I didn't —! I  _ still _ don't know what was going on! She started to change, she started to become distant, and violent, out on the track. She took out another wagon that we were racing against, and two of the people on that wagon died, and… we stopped racing together after that."

"Did you notice her using any, like… um… powers or abilities that seemed, like… supernatural?" asks Taako. "Anything strange?"

"Oh, yeah! She made that bank get swallowed up by vines and I just thought, hey, maybe those vines started to grow by themselves! How crazy! Those were impressive vines!" Hurley looks hard at them all, and then deflates. "Yes. She has powers that she was using during the races. She was controlling  _ storms _ , and causing the earth to split in two, and — don't get me wrong, it was pretty dope, it looked really cool, but people started to get hurt."

"Did the Raven mention any strange adventures she went on around this time?" asks Magnus. "Or a meeting with anyone?"

"No. When she started developing these powers, she stopped telling me really  _ anything _ ."

"Did you happen to notice her wearing a really cool belt?" Merle asks.

"What?"

Magnus glares at Merle. "Never mind," he says. "Ignore that."

"Did she wear any…?" Taako tries to find the words to describe a belt, without  _ actually _ describing a belt. "… new accessories?"

"No." Hurley frowns. "Is that the source of her power?"

"No, no, no," Magnus assures her. "We're just always looking for new fashion ideas."

"Just want to stay abreast of the trends," Taako agrees, nodding. "Seems… unrelated now, I guess."

"I think I have a way for us to stop her," Hurley says once more. "But I  _ refuse _ to harm her. Whatever we do, I won't be party to anything that sees  _ any _ harm come to her. She's not at fault here, she's just… she's lost control of something that's bigger than herself."

"Sure, sure, sure," says Merle. "Don't you worry. We'll take care of  _ that _ side of things."

"She's not a bad person, she's — she's not going to be able to give up her powers willingly. She's  _ terrified _ . Last time we spoke, she had this moment of lucidity, and she talked about how afraid she was, like — she was developing these powers she couldn't control, and the only thing she wanted was proof that there something more powerful than her. She wanted to be bested. She wanted to be shown that this power she developed wasn't absolute, that she could maybe one day be… be beaten."

Taako laughs nervously. 

"Yeah, listen, if you're looking for people more powerful than her," says Magnus, "last time we met her, she knocked us out in like  _ one attack _ ."

"That's because you tried to fight her," says Hurley.

"Well… yeah. What, if we tried to  _ hug _ her, it would have gone better?"

"No, she's probably really good at hugging too. Because she can control vines, and just sort of wrap you up and give you a plant hug. Look,  _ I _ can't beat her in a fight, and I'm an extremely gifted martial artist. But there  _ is _ one thing I think I can beat her at."

Hurley grabs the corner of the huge brown tarp and, in one swift motion, pulls it off the battle wagon. It has a dark grey, tanned leather exterior, with sleek patches of thick silvery armour all across it, and a long flat bow with a black metal engine block poking out through it. On the front of the wagon, two shiny chrome spirals are positioned on either side, emulating a ram's horns. On the back, there's an array of six huge exhaust pipes hanging off of the end.

This battle wagon is the single most imposing physical object any of the Reclaimers can remember seeing in their entire lives.

" _ Shotgun _ ," Magnus says, staring at it in awe. "I called it. You all heard me call it."

"That's a bitchin' ride," says Merle, circling the Frankensteinian creation.

"Yeah, thanks," says Hurley, sounding pleased. "I've been working on it for weeks now. I've stripped some of the best parts off the wagons I won in pink slip races, and I put together a vehicle I  _ know _ I can beat her in. But I need riders, in order to pull that off. And before we can even challenge her, I'm gonna need help getting my hands on a part to finish this wagon off, and unfortunately, getting that part is going to require a little… lawbreaking."

"Is it a hood ornament?" asks Magnus.

"No. We've got two badass ones of those already, see?"

"Is it a door?" asks Taako.

"Mm, nope, we've got doors."

"Sponge dice?" asks Merle.

"Engine?" Magnus guesses.

"Nope, got an engine," says Hurley, sounding more and more bemused.

"Gasoline? Wagon gas? To put in your wagon engine?"

"Wheels?"

"Top?"

"Listen," says Taako, taking pity on Hurley. "I know you're really worried about your friend right now, and I know you don't know us really well, but let me promise you this." He hesitates, and glances at Merle. "Are we out of the Zone of Truth?"

"Oh, yeah. Far away from it."

"Everything's going to be  _ fine. _ "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the massive delay, and thank you for your patience! I don't think I can guarantee a consistent posting schedule, but I'm going to do my damndest to stick to one chapter every weekend, so stay tuned. :D


	5. The Arcane Heist That Goes Incredibly Well

I certainly hope none of you are allergic to _pickles_

Because our heroes are going to be _in_ one…  
**… It's T _he Adventure Zone._**

~~~~

Merle, Magnus, and Taako stand silently together in the near-darkness of night, just around the corner from the entrance to a gang's hideout, quietly bickering over who's going to try their unique and totally subtle infiltration approach first.

"The part that I need," Hurley had told them a few hours before, while they were still back in her garage, "is a really integral component. You're allowed to come up with any propulsion system you want for your battle wagon, and mine requires what's called an arcane core. It powers the wagon's engines, and some of its other special features — we'll get to those later. But they're a really rare commodity. Fortunately, there's a rival group of racers called the Hammerheads. I've been following their activities for a while, and they just got in a shipment. So if you could break into their garage, and get me one of these arcane cores, I can win you that race, and I can bring the Raven's reign of terror to an end."

"You don't care if  _ these _ guys get killed, right?" Merle had asked her quickly before they set out.

"I do. I really do. Listen, I wish I could give you lethal authority, but I  _ am _ still sworn to uphold… at least the important laws. I need you to get in there,  _ don't _ kill anyone, get me one of those arcane cores, and then bring it back here. It might be a little tricky because they're a pretty savage group of racers out on the track — they don't take as light a touch as the Raven and I used to — but please try not to kill anyone."

It's out of deference to Hurley and the fact she saved their lives that the three Reclaimers are hesitating now, staring around the corner at the Hammerheads' garage, considering the best possible way to rob them without accidentally killing anyone and having to toss any bodies over the edge of the nearby cliff. 

The garage is surrounded by a twelve-foot scrap metal reinforced wall, with twin spirals of barbed wire at the top of it, eliminating any hope of sneaking in through anywhere except the large and imposing gate in the middle of the wall. Two human ruffians holding large clubs chat idly in front of the gate. Adjacent to the gate, poking right out of the tall metal wall, is a booth with a glass window looking out onto the street, and there's a third ruffian inside that booth.

After a bit more whispered discussion, Merle, Taako, and Magnus decide to let Merle take the first shot. The rugged dwarf draws himself up and walks over to the two idly chatting ruffians with a wholesomely cheerful demeanour. "Hello, friends!" he calls out.

Both ruffians  _ immediately  _ turn to face him. "Hey, hold it right there, buddy!" the one on the left snaps. "Don't come any closer! We're doin' — we're doin' important business ova here."

"Yeah, we're doin'  _ important business _ !" the other one chirps in lock step.

"Those are pretty impressive clubs," says Merle. "But let me tell you about  _ my _ impressive club — the club of  _ Pan _ ."

"What is that? 'S that like some sort of bread?"

"No, no, it's like… it's like a wonderful, beautiful place, where you will spend eternity. Do you know where you're gonna go after you die?"

"I'll  _ neva _ die. I'm too strong."

"Yeah!" the smaller ruffian backs him up. "He's real strong!"

"Hey, bud, why don't you scram?" says the third ruffian in the booth with glass windows, watching Merle with irritation in his narrowed eyes. "We're doin' business here, OK? We don't wanna hurt you, you seem like a nice enough l'il bloke, so why don't you get on outta here."

"Well," says Merle, unperturbed, "that's very nice of you. I'm here on business too! The business of savin' your souls."

"They're pretty safe already. I'm pretty cool with how my soul is."

"Yeah, me too!"

"Yeah, me too."

"You really think so?" Merle says, head tilted with a healthy helping of scepticism. "Let me tell you something — you don't know what's coming down the road. Someone could try to poison you! Someone could try to rob you! Someone could try to kill you! Someone could run a  _ train _ right into this building! Wouldn't that be terrible? And then where are you gonna be? Under the train, is the answer."

"Is someone gonna run a  _ train _ through here!?"

"There is a chance of all of those happening!" Merle insists. "It's a wicked world!"

"Listen," says the ruffian in the booth, "I've heard a pitch like this before, but it's like — most of the time it's like, cut your wicked ways, not like gods are gonna kill you with a train —"

"Let me tell you something. Out there in the world, there are all  _ kinds _ of bad, bad people and miscreants. Just when you think you're the evilest, most powerful wickedest person out there, there's people right outside your door, right out there in the dark, who are gonna come in and take everything you have, and then where will you be?  _ Dead _ , that's where you'll be! Are you catchin' my drift yet, boyo?"

The ruffian squints at him. "I think your drift is that you're gonna try and kill us with a train or somethin', I — I gotta — I'm kinda startin' to pick up what you're puttin' down, and I ain't sure I like the smell of your jib."

Around the corner and out of earshot, Magnus elbows Taako. "Did he not wash his jib before he went out there?"

"Allow me to show you," says Merle. "Look, you will see, right down there —"

He casts a quick and silent Thaumaturgy, and the sound of a train echoes up the street towards them.

The ruffian's eyes go so wide they nearly pop out of his head. "Holy shit, this guy's not kiddin', he's got some sorta train powers!"

Merle nods. "Now, I would like to help you guys  _ avoid _ that train."

"What do we gotta do!?"

"Yeah, tell us, what do we hafta do!? We'll do anything!"

Merle grins. "You've gotta run like crazy shit."

"You — you don't wanna convert us to your — your bread religion?"

"You go ahead and run, I'll catch up to ya, and I'll give you one of these Extreme Teen Bibles I'm holding in my hand, right in just a few minutes."

"Wow, that's a cool lookin' bible." The ruffian stares uncertainly in the direction of the train noises. "Unfortunately I like my current religion I'm affiliated with, I'm a Lutheran, so I'm gonna stick with that."

"Did you hear that?" Merle asks, as the sound of a high-pitched train whistle bears down upon them. "It's getting louder!"

The smaller ruffian breaks. "Guys," he says, voice pitched high and terror in his eyes, "you can stay here if ya want, but I'm gettin' the hell outta here!" He scampers off down the street, leaving the two bigger ruffians at their posts.

"Hey, L'il Jerry! — Get back, Jerry! — Ah, Jerry! Argh. L'il Jerry's really afraid of trains, you really spooked him. Why don'tcha get outta here, bud. You're startin' to pester us."

"You know," says Merle, "people who need people are the luckiest people in the world —"

The ruffian grips his club with both hands and advances threateningly on Merle. "Bud, I'm  _ not _ kiddin'. I smell somethin' funny, and I think it's your jib. Get out."

Merle obeys and runs back around the corner.

Once an appropriate amount of time has passed and things have settled down a little, Magnus gives his own subtle infiltration method a try. He walks right up to the gate and gives the ruffian guarding it a jaunty wave. "Hello!" he calls out, jauntily. "I would like to join your gang, please!"

"OK," says the ruffian, looking him over. "You gotta pay the dues."

"How much would that be? What's the going rate? Is it a monthly thing? Do I need to pay upfront?"

"No, there's no subscription service, it's just a one time fee of ten thousand. Ten thousand upfront, and then you get in."

"Ten thousand what now?"

"Gold 'uns."

"I've got this fish. Don't know if that helps."

"Oh, lemme see him."

"Well —"

"Can I hold him?"

Magnus curls both hands protectively around Steven's glass fish ball. "You can  _ look _ , with your  _ eyes." _

"No no, lemme hold him! Listen, I'll give you access to this gang, you just gotta gimme that fish forever."

"I'm sorry, I can't do that. But! I  _ can _ tell you where to get other fish  _ like _ this. I've got a fish guy, he can set up your whole gang with fish! If you let me in the gang, I will hook you up. You can get in there and get all the fish you want."

"It's a nice offer. Problem is I see  _ your _ fish, and I like him. I think I love him, a little bit?"

"Oh, I get that. I get that. He has that effect on people. Steven is  _ very _ charming."

"I'll tell you what," says the ruffian. "You can join the gang, and then I get the fish Monday, Wednesday, and Friday."

Magnus thinks about it. "What is today?"

"Today's Thursday."

"OK! I like this so far."

"How do you not know what  _ day _ it is?"

"You know, I've been very busy."

"I get that. Sometimes time just sorta slips away from you."

"Ah, tell me about it. You don't have that nine to five, know what I mean? Pretty soon it's like, what even day is it, without the weekly board meetings."

The guy in the booth yells out: "Hey! I don't think the boss would like you lettin' members into the gang without consultin' with him first!"

"I'm happy to meet with his boss," Magnus agrees cheerfully. 

"Ugh… tell ya what, why dontcha let me go inside, and I'll check with the boss — you stay here, I'll go inside and check with the boss, and then, uh… we can move on from there."

"Sounds great."

The guy in the booth flips a switch, and a small door in the gate opens up to let the ruffian inside before closing again. 

"Oh, wait," Magnus says to the guy in the booth. "Did he say  _ Thursday _ ?"

"Yeah, yeah he said Thursday, it's Thursday. Are ya drunk? It's Thursday."

"Sorry! I… will be  _ right  _ back, if he comes back before I get back, tell him ten minutes tops, I'll be  _ right _ back."

"O…K. Boss is gonna be pretty miffed if he comes out and you're not —"

"Literally, like, ten minutes."

"Alright."

Magnus ducks around the corner and rejoins Merle and Taako. "OK," he says, "I took out another one, so there's one left. Taako, there's one left, you got this."

Merle nods. "Come on, Taako, do your magic."

Taako casts Disguise Self on himself to look exactly like L'il Jerry.

"Ah," Merle breathes out softly, " _ brilliant _ ."

Merle accompanies Taako back out towards the gate, patting him affectionately on the shoulder and wearing a broad grin. "Here he is!" Merle announces. "I found him, I talked him into coming back."

Taako points at Merle. "He's a real smart guy, see? But listen, guys, now I gotta take a poop. Like a real emergent poop."

"That's why I brought you back, old buddy," Merle agrees with a nod. 

"You guys should listen to this guy, he's a real smart fella. I gotta take a poop."

"I get that," says the booth guy, frowning. "You know we don't have a bathroom in the  _ garage _ , that'd be disgusting."

"But — that doesn't make sense, we work in there all  _ day _ ."

"I dunno what to tell you, bud, we don't got a bathroom. You should  _ know _ this. You work here, you  _ know _ we don't got a bathroom."

"You know how when you have to really, really, really go," Merle explains, "you don't really think straight?"

"I gotta really poop," says Taako, "but I left my TP in the garage."

"Listen to me, L'il Jerry," says the booth man, his voice softened and oddly sympathetic. "You've always been my favourite. Don't be afraid, and don't be embarrassed, 'cause we've all been there — do ya need me to take you to the john?"

"Is he inside the garage?"

"It's not inside the garage. Here —" The booth guy steps outside and closes the door with a soft  _ snap  _ of a lock behind him. "Give me your hand, and I'll walk you to the john. We'll just go and take care of yer business, and be back before the boss knows that we're gone."

Taako looks at Merle. Merle looks back, and gives him a shrug that seems entirely unconcerned to the untrained eye. "Seems reasonable to me," he says.

"Sounds great," Taako answers, speaking slower than usual, waiting for some other miracle to come in and help them out.

"Good," says the booth guy. "Come with me, L'il Jerry. Hold my hand, so you don't get lost."

They walk off down the street together, and back at the gate, Magnus steps out of the shadows to stand beside Merle, looking quite nonplussed. "I, uh… should we wait?"

Merle gestures at the booth. "No one's guarding it."

"I know, but I mean — should we help Taako? Is he gonna go in the bathroom with that strange man?"

"Well, I think this is gonna be fine!" Taako's Jerry-voice says from the Stones of Farspeech in their pockets. "I'm not worried, at all! I think that, uh… it's gonna be a fine poop, and I think that I can totally handle this whole poop by myself! It's not a big deal!"

"Now, listen, L'il Jerry —" says the booth guy.

"I don't want anybody to worry about me!"

"— you can't tell me not to worry about ya, I love ya too much. Come on."

"Well," says Magnus, "sounds like he's fine. Let's go."

Just as Merle and Magnus turn towards the booth, they hear the booth guy's voice come from the Stone of Farspeech again, only this time it sounds far less fondly sympathetic and a lot more angrily confused. 

"Wait a minute, who's that comin' down the street? Wait a minute, that looks like… that looks like you, L'il Jerry — wait a minute, what the  _ hell _ is goin' on!?"

Magnus freezes with his hand on the switch. "Well, shit."

~~~~

"Hey, that looks like me!" the real L'il Jerry says, walking up the Hammerheads' street towards Taako and the booth guy, pointing one finger in vibrating confusion directly at Taako. "What's goin' on!?"

He's not wrong, of course. Taako does happen to look exactly like him at the moment, because he's pretending to  _ be _ him, a gambit which really works much better when the real thing doesn't come walking into the middle of your con at the last minute. Thinking fast, Taako yells out: "Holy shit! An imposter!" and casts Sleep.

"What the hell is goin' —!?" L'il Jerry shouts, and then, like a switch is flipped, he collapses right on the pavement, out like a light and snoring at a volume seemingly incompatible with his small stature.

"OK," says the ruffian who chose to accompany Taako-Jerry to the john, staring at L'il Jerry's prone form. "Well, I guess that, uh… that explains that."

"Can you believe this?" Taako-Jerry tells him angrily. "It looks like we're gettin' infiltrated!"

"So he was tryin' to infiltrate us, and then he just — passed out? Did he get spooked or somethin'?"

"Listen, we need to check on — what would the boss be angriest about if we lost? The core, right? We need to go check on the core. Make sure it's OK. 'Cause we're obviously under some sort of  _ threat _ here!"

"Yeah, I mean, you've got a pretty good point. I feel like we need to grab the fake L'il Jerry though."

"— and kill him! I'm totally with you on this, we need to kill him."

"No, I was sayin' we could bring him inside an'  _ interrogate _ him."

"When'd you go soft, huh? When'd you go soft?"

"No, it's just like — we need to gather information —"

"We were growin' up together in the streets, out there, in the streets of Goldcliff, an' you were never soft!"

"We met like  _ two months ago _ ."

"You saw a dead bird, an' you'd step on it, you'd say, 'I hate birds'. You had  _ no _ heart. Heartless Hank, we called ya. Was it Hank? Remind me what your real name is, 'cause I can only remember the great nicknames I've given ya over the months."

It probably goes without saying, but for the sake of both clarity and emphasising the avoidance of protagonist-centred morality, the ruffian gives Taako a look which redefines the term 'disbelieving'. "You've neva called me  _ Heartless Hank _ ," he insists angrily. "What are you  _ sayin _ '!?"

"Sorry, I had a — seizure. Listen, we gotta kill this imposter. Throw him in a well, or somethin'."

"I'll tell ya what, bud," says Heartless Hank, growing increasingly agitated. "Why don't you actually  _ tell _ me my real name?" Quick as a flash, he pulls out a dagger, and waves it menacingly in Taako-Jerry's face. " _ What's my name _ ?"

"Listen," says Taako-Jerry, as reasonably as he can. "We go back a long ways —"

"No, we  _ don't,  _ we met  _ two months ago _ . My name,  _ now _ , or I'm gonna  _ gut ya.  _ Gut ya like a  _ fish _ ."

"Your name," says Taako-Jerry slowly. "Is," he continues, just as slowly. "Of course," he adds with a nod. "… Taako."

Heartless Hank flips the dagger into what is unmistakably preparation for a gutting, and Taako quickly goes: "Psych! That's just mine! Say  _ my _ name!", blocks the dagger with a twirl of his umbrella, and immediately follows up with a Magic Missile.

Magnus and Merle both break into a run, as four darts of magical energy zip through the air and hit Heartless Hank at the same time, sending him staggering backwards with the sort of gasp one might gasp when all the air has left their lungs at once.

Merle reaches them first. "Here comes the train!" he shouts, and swings his warhammer with an almighty heave, and misses altogether as Heartless Hank falls straight backwards. Magnus comes in below Merle's swing with his two-handed battleaxe, attempting to cleave the ruffian in two, and the attempt proves overwhelmingly successful when Heartless Hank dies on the spot with a battleaxe buried deep in his chest.

"No!" Taako-Jerry shouts.

Merle gives him a confused look. "What?"

"I never even learned his name!"

"Oh." Merle leans on his warhammer and thinks about it. "Barbara?"

"Now I'll never know!"

"It was Barbara."

"It's lost to time!"

"Nope. No, it was Barbara."

"I'll use process of elimination — it's clearly not Taako. So, that's one name down."

"We'll put Not-Taako on the tombstone," Magnus decides, wrenching his weapon out of Heartless Hank's chest.

"Let's start with Aaron. That's at the top, two As. Is it Aaron?"

Heartless Hank bleeds out at their feet, still and lifeless and quite  _ definitely _ dead, and all three Reclaimers remember at the same time that Lieutenant Hurley specifically asked them  _ not _ to kill anyone during their heist. An uncomfortable silence follows. 

"What did she say would happen if we killed somebody?" Magnus asks the other two.

"I feel like she's gonna be pretty…" Taako starts, and trails off, and then gestures much more confidently. "First off, let me own this one. This one's on me, alright? This one's Taako's. But, uh, seems like we should heal him, because we need Hurley on our side. 

"Yeah…"

"Now, there is one other option. Maybe we just… disappear this little problem. She didn't say anything about these guys wandering off, you know? Wandering off and no one ever hears from them again. She didn't say anything about that, right?"

"Good point," Merle agrees, nodding amicably. 

"We may need Merle's heal spell slots later, but we're definitely not gonna need a corpse."

"So you're saying we eat him."

"What I'm saying is — no.  _ What _ ?"

"Stop recommending that, Merle," says Magnus.

"Kidding," Merle assures them. "Kidding! Ha ha!"

"We just need to, like, get rid of him," Taako explains. 

"This would be the perfect place to cast an interdimensional hole," Magnus suggests.

Merle laughs. "Yeah, if only one of us had one of —  _ oh _ ."

Taako's eyes narrow. "Wait, so  _ you're _ not going to burn a spell slot on healing, but  _ I'm _ gonna burn one on getting rid of the body?"

"Let's face it, if you look at our history —"

"How about you take an extradimensional shovel and dig a fucking  _ hole _ . How 'bout that? How 'bout that thing I said? That's an option. Lazybones."

There are no shovels, wells, pig farms, or open graves nearby, as they all quickly determine. They are, however, only two blocks away from the cliff's edge — so, under the cover of darkness provided by the night, Merle, Taako, and Magnus carry Barbara/Heartless Hank's body over to the cliff's edge. They're greeted by a scenic view, as evidenced by all the nice houses of well-off people with windows and balconies looking out over the windy desert far below, and absolutely no one out on the darkened streets tonight.

"I feel like somebody should say something," Merle says.

"Let me say something," answers Taako. "We should check his pockets. Because I don't think we've checked them yet. We might find the keys. To the place."

They do, in fact, find the keys to the place. They also find, and subsequently ignore, a picture of the ruffian's wife and kids, as well as a pouch with three hundred gold coins inside, which they most definitely do  _ not _ ignore. Perhaps Barbara had just won a poker game. Life giveth, life taketh away.

"We'll always remember you, not-Taako," says Magnus solemnly. "And… probably-not-Aaron."

With those last words, they chuck the body off the edge of the cliff. 

Afterwards, they head back to the Hammerhead base, stepping carefully over the sleeping body of L'il Jerry on the way, and let themselves in using the door control in the booth. 

The field inside the laughably tall and barbed-wire-tipped walls is mercifully empty of people, and boasts three separate buildings. One is a large and evidently busy garage, filled with light and noise and sparks. The other two are much smaller, plain and cinder-block. 

In spite of the compound being empty, Merle, Magnus, and Taako do an exaggerated Loony-Tunes-style sneak over to one of the smaller buildings to begin doing some professional reconnaissance. They've crossed about half of the way there when Merle lets out a humongous and unfortunately uncontrollable sneeze.

Activity in the large garage stops for a second. Tres Horny Boys freeze in place. Another second passes — then a third — and then the noisy activity resumes.

The trio creep over to the tiny dark garage, and search for a tiny convenient hole through which they can perform the aforementioned professional reconnaissance. Unfortunately, there do not seem to be any tiny convenient holes in attendance. The garage door is a thick heavy metal, and secured by a padlock the size of Merle. 

Magnus whispers: "Seems like this building is where they'd be keeping some kind of prototype engine wagon thing, right? Seems pretty well secured."

Taako nods and whispers back: "Yeah, I think you're probably right. Um — I've never been to a garage before, but your read on it seems good. Merle, what do you think?"

Merle considers the giant padlock. "I dunno," he says skeptically. "Seems to me like the first thing they want you to look at is usually the  _ last _ thing you want to look at."

"I see. So this is kind of a Schroedinger's Cat thing," says Taako. "We can't be sure it's in there, or  _ not _ in there, at this exact moment."

Merle nods vehemently. "It  _ will _ be in there, unless we look in there and see it doesn't exist."

"Man, it would be so great if one of us had some kind of lock-picking ability," says Magnus.

"It  _ would _ be great not to have to blast every door open like I'm Superman," Taako agrees.

Magnus glances back at the big garage. "My bet is,  _ that's _ the workshop, where they all work on wagons together. The building over  _ there _ is the office, headquarters, hangout of the gang.  _ This _ seems like the place where they keep their number one winning-est wagon."

"What if I cast Silence at the door," says Merle, "and then Magnus beats the shit out of it?"

"Phantom Fist isn't going to melt steel beams." Magnus examines the giant padlock. "And I don't want to hurt Railsplitter."

"Hang on a minute, I got this." Taako grins widely, focuses on the solid wall in front of him, and whispers, very dramatically: " _ Magic. _ " 

Clairvoyance hangs silently in the air, allowing Taako to see inside the building as though he were standing within it. Merle and Magnus witness a third eye, glowing brightly blue, open up in the general vicinity of Taako's butt, and both independently choose not to mention it.

What Taako sees inside the building is a battlewagon resembling a tank. It has three rows of shark teeth on the front. Mounted above the teeth are two gigantic cannons. Inside of the tank's mouth is a large, spiny, very violent-looking grappling hook. Mounted on the roof, right above the driver's cabin, is a heavily shielded and reinforced compartment. The entire tank is, somehow, shaped like a massive shark.

"Well, guys," says Taako, "good news, bad news. Bad news: tank. Good news: no dogs."

"Great," says Magnus grumpily. He can't think of any situation where a presence of dogs would be  _ bad _ news. "Then I would say that our next stop is building number three. The headquarters. Because we can hear people in building number one, so we know that there's — at least more than one person in there."

"Headquarters it is," says Merle. "And, by the way, you're not the  _ only _ guy with Clairvoyance. Let me use mine this time."

"This building has windows, though," Magnus points out as they approach it. "I could just pop you up on my shoulders —"

"Fine. I feel like a child at the circus, but OK."

Just visible through the window are rows of bunk beds with storage chests, lewd posters on the wall, some doused lanterns on end tables — basically a standard issue bunk room. Two rough-looking individuals are asleep on the other side of the room, and just to Merle's left he can see another ruffian asleep on one of the bottom bunks. 

Merle quietly communicates this to the others, then adds: "You know, we haven't even checked to see if the door's locked."

"We wanted to scope it out before we just  _ walked in _ ," Magnus hisses. "You ever broke into a place before, Merle?"

"They're exhausted from looking at their lewd posters. We'd be  _ fine _ ."

Instead of joining the argument, Taako heads over and quietly tries the door. To nobody's great surprise, it's unlocked. Merle joins him and casts Silence inside the room, centred as much as possible in the very centre of the space, and the heavy snoring of one of the rough individuals cuts off abruptly. Either he's just died, which would probably mean another trip back to the cliff's edge for the intrepid and completely honest Reclaimers, or the Silence spell is as good as its word. Or Merle's cured the ruffian's sleep apnea.

One of the storage chests sits open, with shoddy-looking clothes spilling out onto the floor. There do not otherwise appear to be any immediate, obvious clues as to the arcane core's location.

As one unspoken unit, Merle, Taako, and Magnus begin opening up chests and digging through their contents, sending clothes flying up into the air like a wardrobe montage on a makeover TV show. Magnus grabs three leather coats with shark logos on their backs, because they're cool and he wants them, and if they're here as thieves  _ anyway _ , then he might as well. Bits and pieces of grease-covered accessories from various chests make surprisingly good disguises for all three of them, as they quickly discover, turning the next several minutes into an  _ actual  _ wardrobe montage on a makeover TV show. 

They leave the bunk fully decked out in Hammerhead gear.

"Cool!" Taako gestures toward the noise in the biggest garage. "Shall we away to building…?"

"… one," Magnus prompts.

"Building one?"

"Yeah, that seems like the only building left."

"Right? Of the three, it's definitely the only one we haven't looked at yet."

They hesitate a moment longer, and then Taako and Merle let Magnus go first, leading them towards the big and noisy garage.

They waltz right in the front door, as confident as gang members who have been there  _ hundreds _ of times before, singing old show tunes together. A few people look up, expressions of confusion on their faces, and Taako — who is, of course, still wearing his L'il Jerry disguise — waves an airy hand at them. "Hey, guys!" he says, once again mimicking their accent. "These are th' new recruits! I'm showin' 'em around the place. Just go about your business. Don't worry about it."

There's a second of stunned silence; then everyone goes back to work.

There are three battle wagons in this garage, with one suspended in the air on a lifted platform. Someone who is decidedly  _ not _ covered in grease sits at a desk, going over paperwork. Four other gang members are embroiled in various kinds of work around the garage; two are working on the suspended battle wagon's engine, while the other two beat a prisoner with clubs. 

The prisoner is  _ gigantic _ , and covered in a burlap crude cloth sack, chained to a chair with a full metal helmet encasing their head. They certainly don't look like they're a Hammerhead gang member; but even if they did, the subtle clenching and unclenching of Magnus's fist at his side signal to Taako and Merle, loud and clear, that Magnus is  _ this close _ to blowing the entire operation on an unplanned rescue.

"Why didn't you wait at the door!?" one of the ruffians beating on the prisoner demands. As it turns out, he's the door guard Magnus chased inside. "L'il Jerry, I was gonna take care of this, I was just puttin' him on ice. Givin' him the old freeze-out, see if he really wanted it."

"Look," says Taako, "we've  _ recruited _ him now, an' look — " He puts a hand on Merle's shoulder. "— we got our own holy man! That's gotta be good luck, right?"

"Guess that'd be fun. We could do our own church services."

"Yeah!"

"These are the new guys, Maarvie!" the door guard yells to the ruffian behind the desk — most likely the leader. "Whaddya think?"

Maarvie frowns. "Yeah, I don't know — I don't feel like it's time for us to  _ expand _ , you know? I'm not lookin' to split our earnings any more 'n we already have. I don't know what these two guys could bring to the table — 'cept for a little bit of divinity, in the short one's case."

"I see you've got your suspension connected counterclockwise," Magnus muses, inspecting the bottom of the suspended battle wagon. "You know, if you do that in a counterclockwise-clockwise motion, so that each one is interacting with the other one independently, you'll get  _ much _ better handling."

The thug who introduced them does not sound very impressed. "What the hell are you  _ talkin' _ about?"

"Listen to this guy!" Taako insists. "That makes  _ perfect _ sense to me. Another person who knows about wagons, see?"

"I don't even understand how somethin' can be counterclockwise  _ and _ clockwise in the same sort of orientation!"

Magnus points. "You need to put in a second set of gears, see? So that each set is moving independently, instead of one force driving both of them at the same time."

There's a long silence; then: "Double gears! O'  _ course _ ! Why didn't  _ we _ think o' that!?" 

"See?" Taako grins. "What'd I tell ya? He's a real genius."

"Hey, show me what you're talking about over here. Pop the suspension out, I wanna see how it actually works."

"Oh, of course." Magnus gestures. "Can you hand me that set of gears? … No, the 8-teeth." Magnus takes the gears and vanishes under the suspended battle wagon.

"Hey, listen," Taako says to their new friend while Magnus works. "This guy's real sharp. We should show him the, uh, the core after this. See what he makes of that, huh?"

"Yeah, I mean — I  _ guess _ so. If he's this proficient with vehicles, I'm sure he's seen an arcane core before."

Magnus pops out from under the wagon with a satisfied smile. "Done!"

The chained figure in the corner, who, until this point, had been staring dejectedly at the floor, looks up through two eye holes cut into the helmet. It sees Magnus and Merle, and immediately from inside the mask they hear a barely-restrained roar.

" _ Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmrgh _ !"

It starts shaking, and struggling, and generally acting much more like a prisoner should — namely, freaking the fuck out.

"Hey! Cut that out!" The door guard hits the figure with an almighty  _ thwack _ of his club, and the prisoner slumps halfway off the chair, knocked out.

"Yeah! Calm down!" Taako agrees, and hits the prisoner in the stomach.

"Hey," Maarvie goes, annoyed. "Cool it. Let's not go crazy, OK?"

"This guy pooped himself," says Taako. "I'm gonna take him outside and change him. There's no reason you guys should have to see that."

"Oh, I think he'll be fine," Maarvie says with a chuckle. "I think we can let him stew. I wanna talk to these two."

"Great!" says Taako. "Let's let him stink. This is cool. Cool day. Cool garage. You know, my problem with the garage is always — it smells so good. Now we're really fixin' that up with a poop stink."

"We'd have to unchain him, he could fight us, I'm just not interested. It's real hard to get this guy in his bindings. It's gonna keep being hard until we indoctrinate him. But when we get him workin' for us… by  _ god _ , I'm real excited about the possibilities this guy brings to the table."

"Who  _ is  _ he?" asks Merle, squinting.

"Oh, let's just call 'im a rare import. We managed to secure him outta state, bring him in. It's not  _ exactly _ on the books, but we paid a pretty penny for 'im, and I think he's gonna pay out  _ big _ dividends out on the track."

"Holy shit," Taako breathes, just loud enough for Magnus and Merle to hear. "It's  _ Klarg _ ."


	6. The Klarg Reunion, Sort of

Klarg and our heroes are reunited

But does it feel so good?

Let's find out in…  
 **… T _he Adventure Zone._**

~~~~

There are two reasons why Magnus, standing in the middle of the Hammerheads' garage staring at Klarg bound and chained in the chair, is trembling. The first is that despite being in enemy territory for quite a while now, he hasn't had one decent proper fight, and adrenaline is starting to build up to dangerous levels within his muscles. The second is that even though Klarg is technically their enemy, and even though Klarg is technically an aggressive and dangerous bugbear, and  _ even though _ Klarg would probably be  _ extremely angry _ about how they pulled a fast one on him with Taako's Charm spell — as far as Magnus is concerned, it's still a black-and-white situation of a prisoner who can't defend himself being beaten, and to add insult to injury, it's  _ someone they had quite a nice tea party with _ .

"Hey, what's the matter, bud?" asks Maarvie, squinting at Magnus. "You look like you seen a ghost or something."

"Uh, no, no. Everything's fine."

"You sure —? Hey, anybody else hear that?"

From outside the garage comes the faint sound of someone banging insistently on the entry gate.

"Someone go check that out — why isn't Barbara out there? Jerry, go check that out. No, not you," Maarvie says irritably as Taako takes a step toward the door. " _ Regular _ Jerry."

Taako, Magnus, and Merle all exchange a very uneasy look as Regular Jerry, the door guard who introduced them, moves off. All three of them are thinking exactly the same thing — they'd completely forgotten about the  _ real _ L'il Jerry.

"I can check it out if you need me to," Taako pipes up.

"No, I like havin' you around. I'm gonna send regular Jerry out there."

"Yeah, but Jerry has his… knees. You know? He doesn't need to be walkin'."

"I do have my knees," says regular Jerry, frowning in confusion. "That is true."

"What if it's trouble?" Merle chimes in. "You oughta send somebody  _ with _ regular Jerry, you know, just in case."

"Naw, it shouldn't be trouble. I don't know why  _ Barbara's _ not out there. Jerry, just go check it out."

"OK."

Jerry leaves the garage. The three Reclaimers exchange one last look, and then abandon most of their hopes of stealing the arcane core peacefully.

"Uh," says Magnus, "you're  _ squished _ ! —" and he yanks on the lever controlling the mechanism suspending the battle wagon in the air.

" _ What're ya _ —!" both the Hammerheads underneath yell before their voices are abruptly cut off, smushed under the big flat wagon's wheels. 

" _ No _ !" one of the two ruffians over near Klarg screams, and he rushes forward to take a swing at Magnus with a giant hammer. Magnus parries, redirects, and pushes him right back.

"Wait!" Merle yells. "It was an accident! We didn't mean to crush those guys! And I — I think I can actually heal them!"

His words are completely lost in the ensuing scuffle. 

Maarvie stands up and grabs what looks like a stun baton from behind his desk; Magnus hefts Railsplitter and slams the blunt end as nonlethally as he can manage into his attacker's stomach; his attacker stumbles backwards, recovers, and takes a single angry step forward; one of Klarg's giant hands snaps out and grasps the Hammerhead's shirt, pulling him back down onto the ground.

Merle decides very quickly that a grateful Klarg is probably better than an angry Klarg, and brings his warhammer down on Klarg's chains, snapping the links in half. Klarg  _ leaps _ to his feet, and all the chains fall to the ground as he roars defiantly towards the ceiling.

Taako takes full advantage of Klarg's distraction, as well as the element of surprise his own disguise provides — he grabs Maarvie's arm and jams Maarvie's stun baton back into Maarvie's own face. Electricity sparks over the man's entire head as he falls straight backwards to land on the ground, stiff as a board and periodically convulsing.

The one ruffian left standing decides that with his leader prone on the ground, and Klarg bearing aggressively down on them, the odds are  _ not  _ stacked in his favour, and he hightails it toward the door. Magnus manages one last slash at him as he runs past, opening up his arm, but fortunately it does not result in another death; just a trail of slick blood splatter between Magnus and the garage door.

Klarg wraps his chain around the neck of the last Hammerhead thug on the ground, and hauls him painfully upright. 

"Pleasepleaseplpleasepleaseplease —" the thug says desperately, his fingers grasping fruitlessly on the chain at his neck. "PleaseI'llgiveyouanything —"

"Where's the arcane core?" Taako asks him.

"It's in a chest, behind the boss's desk, it's on top of the toolbox —"

"Is it locked?"

"Yes!"

"Where's the key?"

"Maarvie has it!  _ Pleaseletmeoutofhere _ —"

Taako heads over to Maarvie's prone form on the ground and searches for the key, completely ignoring the Hammerhead they have at Klarg's mercy. He grabs the stun baton while he's at it, slipping it happily into his bag. 

"Heeeeey, buddy," Magnus says to Klarg, taking one extremely careful step towards the giant bugbear.

Klarg roars angrily. Magnus stops dead, but he doesn't stop speaking: "Klaaaarg. You're my hugbear buddy, remember?"

" _ No. _ Do you have.  _ Any idea.  _ What a  _ rough few months I've had." _

"I can imagine it's been pretty bad."

" _ Pretty bad _ !?"

"But we're here, and we're here to  _ help _ . We  _ cannot _ do that if you kill this man."

Klarg pulls the chain around the Hammerhead's neck tighter and steps toward one of the covered battle wagons. " _ Stay back! _ " he snaps, anger and aggression as strong as they ever were. _ " _ I swear I'll kill him,  _ stay back _ ."

"If you let this man go," Magnus tries, "I'll —"

"I am  _ so mad at you!! _ Oh  _ boy _ , am I  _ angry! _ I am  _ peeved!! _ "

"— I'll give you all the Oolong tea you want, if you let him go."

Merle casts Calm Emotions on the room, which works immediately on Klarg's Hammerhead hostage — the thug is immediately and abruptly chill, perfectly happy with literally  _ any _ conclusion to this standoff, up to and including his own death — but does not work even remotely on Klarg. Instead of calming down, Klarg roars again, drop-kicks the Hammerhead thug towards Magnus, and rips the tarp off of the battle wagon. It's a two-wheeled long and sleek affair, something Magnus would probably have likened to a motorcycle if he had any idea what motorcycles were. 

Klarg hops onto it. "If I  _ ever _ see you guys again," he snarls, "I  _ swear _ — it'll be  _ bad.  _ For  _ you _ ."

"But Klarg —"

" _ NOPE. _ "

Klarg revs the engine of the battle wagon, and zooms off out of the garage.

"I can't believe he left before we could do all of our classic bits with him," says Taako morosely. "Those were real memorable moments."

As the engine of Klarg's battle wagon fades into the distance, a new sound takes its place — sirens.

"Aw, no," Taako says, immediately animated again. "That ain't great." He heads immediately over the chest to grab the arcane core, stopped only by the weak and angry voice of Maarvie on the ground.

"This is a l _ egitimate business _ ," snaps Maarvie. "What are you guys  _ doin _ '? I swear, I'm gonna get  _ revenge _ on this heinous act."

"We should have killed him," says Merle flatly.

"Not too late," says Magnus.

"Nah. Let's just get that core and get out of here."

Taako unlocks the chest, reaches into the velvet-lined interior, and pulls out a shiny blue cube with a swirling white cloud inside it. "Bingo," he says, and tosses it unceremoniously into his bag along with Maarvie's stun baton. "Hey, real quick, lever man, can you, uh, raise the car up so we can check on those fools? See how they're doing?"

The sirens in the distance grow louder as Magnus cranks the battle wagon back up into the air, and he announces with a grin: "They're breathing! They're just sleeping! Time to go!"

"Wait, what about the battle wagon? We can drive for it."

"Driving for it is going to be  _ real _ incriminating."

"Oh, yeah, I guess that's true."

Together, Merle, Taako, and Magnus slip quietly out of the garage, out of the compound, and into the Goldcliff streets before the sirens arrive and anyone in authority can find out they were there in the first place.

~~~~

Hurley slams her garage door closed behind Magnus, Taako, and Merle as though she is very concerned about the idea of uninvited guests, which is perhaps not unwarranted, since the very next words that come out of her mouth are: "Did I hear sirens?"

"What?" says Magnus. "No! That was, uh… birds."

Amazingly, Hurley is not fooled by this. "They didn't catch you guys, did they?"

"No. That's why we're  _ here _ , stupid."

Hurley looks sharply at him, and then tilts her head in resignation. "You know what, that  _ was _ a little dumb of me. Did you get the core?"

Taako nods proudly. "You know it."

"Great! Let me see it."

Taako rummages for the glowing cube in his bag, and holds it out. Sitting in his hand in the dim light of the garage, even Hurley is momentarily transfixed by the beauty of the powerful engine component.

A big grin spreads across her face as she wraps her fingers around it. "This is it," she says quietly. "This is it, guys. We can  _ do _ this. We're gonna be the best racers —  _ ever _ . You guys did  _ great _ ." Her grin fades. "You didn't kill anybody, did you?"

"No," Magnus answers flatly.

"No!" Taako answers, a good deal less flatly than might perhaps be wise. "Not to our knowledge!"

"We most certainly did  _ not _ ," Magnus reassures the lieutenant.

"OK. I guess I'll have to take your word for it. If I hear anything on the police scanner, though, I — well, I'll just be very disappointed in you. There won't be any, like, consequences if you did kill anybody, it's just…"

"No, listen," says Taako. "Things got  _ rough _ in there, and some people did get hurt pretty bad. But they escaped with their lives, you know?"

Hurley gives him a weak smile. "I guess that's all I can hope for!"

"Let me put it this way — if this makes you feel better, this was definitely our  _ least _ fatal conflict we've ever had in our entire lives."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Magnus agrees wholeheartedly. "We could have killed  _ way _ more. And we have! We killed a whole  _ town _ once!"

"We did," says Taako. "We wiped out a whole —! Well, that's neither here nor there. So is this the right thing? I just guessed. Did we do good? You proud of us, or…?"

Far from looking proud of them, Hurley mostly looks horrified by their implications. She  _ looks _ like she's about to ask for more detail, but then clearly thinks better of it, and clears her throat all business-like once again. "No, that's… that's the right thing. Here, let me pop it in."

As the others watch, Hurley installs the arcane core under the hood of her sleek black battle wagon, twisting it into a place with a large spanner. The engine kicks on the moment she finishes, and the noise it makes is  _ deafening _ , filling the small space of the garage rather like rambunctious children filling a playground.

Hurley looks ecstatic. She hops briefly into the wagon to turn off the engine, turns a delighted grin on the three Reclaimers, and then leads them to the wooden table in the corner where a large map of the racetrack is spread across the surface. It's a six-mile course, beginning far outside the edges of the city in the wastelands, and ends right by the cliff to the west of Goldcliff. As the map shows, if racers don't pump their brakes the  _ instant _ they cross the finish line, they'll go careening off of the cliff's edge and fall to a very grisly death. It's anyone's guess how often this actually occurs.

"OK, let me explain the rules," says Hurley, tapping the map. "We're gonna be up against fifteen opponents."

"Wait," says Magnus, " _ we _ ?"

"Yeah."

"I assumed this would be, like, you driving, and us going like… yay! Go Ram!"

"No — a race team can have four people on it, so I'm going to need all the help I can get. I'll be driving the car. Magnus, you're going to be in charge of security. Anything goes, out on the racetrack, so we're probably going to have a lot of boarders, and when that happens I'll need you to kick them off the wagon. And listen — if the opportunity strikes, and you feel like hopping onto somebody else's wagon —"

" _ Done. _ "

"… OK."

"Don't need to ask twice!" Magnus grins, his imagination happily running wild with the fuel.

"Probably the least necessary sentence anyone's ever uttered," Taako mutters, remembering how Magnus easily scaled a speeding train with nothing but a rope and gravity-bending boots. "In  _ all _ of our adventures, frankly."

"Noted." Hurley peers down at the map again. "Now, you win a battle wagon race by either finishing first, or being the only surviving wagon by the end of the race. So we're going to need somebody who can assault the other wagons in as  _ nonlethal _ a way as possible. And I can't think of a better person to handle that than you, Taako, with your ranged magic. There's a gunner compartment in the middle of the car — I attached a harpoon cannon up there. We need to save that for as long as we can, because I think we'll need it to catch up to the Raven. But otherwise, I want you up there flinging your magic missiles, as you do."

Taako frowns thoughtfully. "Are you wanting to  _ win _ , or are we just trying to get a hold of the Raven?"

"I want to  _ win _ . Beating her is the  _ only _ way we'll convince her to let you guys help her."

"Can we ask her to not use any magic stuff?"

"I don't think she's gonna listen to that? She's a really honourable racer, it's her favourite thing, so I don't think she's gonna… you know,  _ cheat _ , by making a big wall of vines come out and block us or anything. But… you never know. She's a lot of things, but she's not a cheater. She's… she's alright. She  _ was _ alright."

Nearly all of Hurley's enthusiasm is gone, replaced with open concern and worry. 

"Hey!" Magnus claps a hand on her shoulders. "Everything's going to be great. Cheer up!"

"Yeah!" says Taako. "I'm sure she's a real nice lady."

Hurley nods, more emphatically with each passing second, trying to convince herself they're right and everything will turn out fine. Then she grins again, and says: "Merle, I actually have something I want to give you."

From under the table, she pulls out a long, flat box. Nestled inside is a really big, black, metal wrench, almost as tall as Merle is, with four green gems on its head. When she passes it to Merle, he realises with surprise that its weight and heft are similar to his warhammer, and it could quite easily be used as a close-range combat weapon in a pinch. 

"I've had this for a long time," Hurley explains. "I need you to wield it, out there on the track. It's called the Adamant Spanner. Those four gems you see there? They're all imbued with a charge of a spell called Repairs. If we take too much damage, or a wheel falls off, or something like that, I need you to help keep us afloat. If things get a bit too real, you can  _ also _ clobber somebody with it."

Merle swings it a few times, and nods approvingly at the  _ whoosh _ sound it makes in the air.

"Oh, oh!" Hurley looks them all up and down. "You guys are gonna need safety harnesses, too!"

" _ Nope _ ," Magnus immediately says.

"Yes," Hurley replies simply, and she pulls out several black vests containing various belts and buckles.

Magnus eyes them dubiously. "Do we have time to put some sequins on them before the race?"

"Uh, the race is tomorrow morning, so…"

"Oh, good, plenty of time!"

"I could spend the night teaching you guys about battle wagon racing,  _ or _ you could spend the night putting sequins on your safety harness."

"I vote sequins," Taako says instantly.

"Yeah, I'm gonna go with the sequins," says Magnus. Merle nods in full agreement.

Hurley shakes her head and gives each of them a harness to try on. Magnus and Taako both receive near perfect fits; Merle's is a bit tight in the midsection, because it's one of Hurley's old harnesses, and while they're both roughly the same height, Merle is definitely wider. The tightness cuts a very nice silhouette, though, so Merle doesn't complain too much.

"If you fall off the wagon," Hurley explains, "these deploy a bubble around you that will slow the impact with the ground and keep you guys from getting completely murdered out there. Don't get me wrong, it's still really,  _ really, very _ super-duper dangerous. People are going to be shooting, you know, crossbows, and throwing spears, and all that stuff. These won't protect you guys from  _ that _ . But if you do fall off the wagon, they'll keep you from  _ definitely _ dying."

"Is there a way to deploy it manually?" Magnus asks, fiddling with one of the buckles.

"Nope. It just pops off once you fall off the wagon, and you're about to hit the ground. Oh, and one more thing — remember, when you're out there, it's technically not legal. There'll be thousands and thousands of spectators watching, through these —" She points at the map. "— these black pylons that outline the track. So you're going to need anonymity." She grins. "I have one more gift for the three of you."

She pulls out three boxes, each with a variety of masks in them, and tosses one each to Magnus, Merle, and Taako. Magnus's is the roaring head of a humongous grizzly bear. Taako's is a mongoose mask, with two beady adorable little black eyes, a long snout, a black nose, a cute furry face, and a row of surprisingly sharp and  _ un _ adorable teeth in its mouth. Merle's is an owl mask, with two giant yellow eyes surrounded by white feathers and a rugged-looking, cracked yellow beak.

"Fits perfectly," says Taako, grinning through the teeth-lined mouth of his mongoose. "Did you know the mongoose has a specialised set of choline receptors that make it impervious to venom? Yeah. They're known for killing snakes. Veeery surprisingly dangerous. You know, like Rikki-Tikki-Tavi!"

Hurley tilts her head in confusion.

"Not everything has to be a joke," says Taako defensively. "Sometimes you can be honest about your feelings. I may not be the most threatening silhouette, but I like to think of myself as somebody who can stand up for — you know, it doesn't  _ always _ have to be goof, goof, dildo, OK? I'm travelling around with the boner squad and I never get to just say what I'm feeling! I have emotions!"

"Cast Calm Emotions," Magnus whispers to Merle, "quick."

"It's not all abraca-fuck-you and what-have-you! I have a beating heart! I'm multi-dimensional! I'm a fully realised creation!  _ Fuck _ !"

Unfortunately for Taako, it's difficult to take  _ anyone _ seriously when they're speaking from inside an adorable mongoose mask, much less an elven wizard carrying a flamboyantly beautiful umbrella.

"The  _ owl _ is a symbol of wisdom," says Hurley, "and also they can barf up whole mice skeletons. You're not the only one who knows about animal stuff,  _ Taako _ ."

"OK," says Taako, brow raised.

"It's called the bolus," Magnus offers.

"It's called the — I  _ know _ it's called the bolus,  _ Magnus _ ."

The evening continues in kind, and frankly it's something of a miracle that they manage to make any progress on their team strategy at all. They do, though. They work out their positions on the battle wagon (Hurley driving, Merle riding shotgun, Taako peeking out through the harpoon component in the backseat, and Magnus between two rails on the back of the wagon); Hurley teaches them more about specific racing details; and they even manage to get a little sleep, all in preparation for what is sure to be an extremely eventful morning.


	7. In Which Merle is Extremely Lucky He's a Dwarf, and also, Garyl

Get out of my dreams and into my battle wagon

Hop in the backseat baby…  
**… It's T _he Adventure Zone_**.

~~~~

The sun shines brilliantly off the sand of the Goldcliff desert, blinding anyone who looks directly at the glinting metal of the battle wagons. The drive out to the starting line gives Taako, Magnus, Merle, and Hurley the perfect chance to practice some of their strategy, working together under the sun's heat; and then they're at their designated spot, greeted by a ground crew of goblins, motioning them into a giant opaque crate.

"This is just another security precaution," Hurley tells them, her voice echoing a little in the small space, "don't worry. It also helps keep things fair, 'cause you can't really scout out the other wagons we're going up against today."

It gets very, swelteringly hot during the thirty minutes they spend waiting inside the crate. Beams of sunlight and dust cut through the small holes in the side of the wooden panels. Eventually, they hear a roar of frenzied activity from outside — the revving of engines, war cries, cheers, deep-voiced laughter. 

Then: a loud horn.

"Ready yourselves," says Hurley tightly. Her hands are loose and ready on the steering wheel. "When you hear the second horn, that's when we're going. Remember, we have fifteen opponents, but  _ all _ we have to do is beat Sloane. Do you guys have any last words?"

"Um," says Merle, "yeah —"

The second horn blows. Anything Merle says next is lost in the launch of the race, in the crash of crate doors opening, in the roar of engines, and the blinding wind in their faces as Hurley  _ blasts _ forward. Flashes of light ping back and forth between the dust clouds surrounding battle wagons, and an explosion twenty metres to the left rocks the very ground they drive on. The horn sounds again, thunderous and deafening across the desert, indicating a battle wagon gone from the race. Two magic missiles zip over their wagon with a shower of sparks that only barely misses Taako.

Hurley shifts gears in order to fly ahead of all the carnage, and Merle is pressed back in his seat by the sheer force of the acceleration. Magnus stays on the wagon only by the grace of the straps and buckles attaching him to the wagon's metal rails on the back. 

Four more horns blare from the tall black pylons marking out the race course.

"Every time you hear one of those, it means we knocked somebody out!" Hurley yells into the wind. "We're already five down! We're looking good!"

"What!?" Magnus yells from the very back of the wagon.

"Why are you yelling!?" Merle yells from the passenger seat.

" _ Damn _ it!" Hurley shouts, as ahead of them a single tri-wheeled vehicle with two large black wings breaks away from the pack of battle wagons and zooms too far ahead to see properly. It's the Raven's wagon; the Raven is in first place. From the looks of things, she's likely to  _ remain _ in first place.

"I'll catch up!" Hurley promises. "Just keep everyone else off our tail!"

"What!?" Magnus yells. "What about ketchup!?"

A long bobsled, propelled by a single huge rocket thruster and manned by four goblins wearing velociraptor masks, pulls up close to their wagon. Sensing a scuffle, Merle reaches back to touch Magnus's ankle, and imbues him with the magical enhancement of a bull's strength. The spell seems to attract all attention to Magnus's muscles, glistening in the hot desert sun, and those same muscles have  _ definitely _ grown a little bit, if anyone was keeping track of how big they were before — which, decidedly, no one was. 

One of the goblins on the bobsled runs up the front of the goblins' wagon, makes an effortless flying leap onto our  _ heroes' _ wagon, and tries to bring their very gnarly-looking spear down on Magnus's head in the process. Magnus punches upwards with Phantom Fist and sends both goblin and spear flying back to disappear underneath the bobsled. The goblins' two buddies fling their own spears in Magnus's direction; one of those spears finds its mark and slashes right across Magnus's upper arm.

Magnus readies an arrow and looses it at the bobsled's driver, but the injury on his arm, coupled with the sheer wind whipping around them, sends the arrow glancing off the tiny bobsled's windshield instead.

Taako casts Levitate on the front of the bobsled. It comes off the ground, with the driver frantically spinning the wheel to absolutely no avail. Metal rails underneath the bobsled twist fruitlessly in the air. One of the spear-wielders decides fuck  _ this,  _ and jumps off the back, and his safety harness deploys as designed, leaving him in a silver bubble vanishing quickly into the dust clouds of the desert. The large spear attached to the front of the bobsled cuts a superficial gash up the back of Hurley's wagon, narrowly missing Magnus, and then the bobsled starts spinning wildly out of control until it disappears into the dust, throwing both its remaining riders into the storm.

A horn blasts somewhere above them. Six opposing wagons down.

"That was  _ tight _ !" Hurley shouts, grinning wildly. She shifts gears again, and the wagon speeds somehow even  _ faster _ . For several seconds, all they see is the desert, rough sandy dust storms spinning around them, and all they hear is the rushing wind.

Then a grinding roar precedes a wagon appearing out of the dust just behind them. Its shadow  _ towers _ along the ground, announcing its approach long before the vehicle itself appears. When it does, Magnus and Taako can see what looks like an enormous wooden water-wheel rolling along the sand, with big iron rivets studding the edge; inside the wheel is a static circular chamber, and inside that chamber are two stout-looking dwarven pilots wearing gerbil masks.

Merle casts a quick Healing Word on Magnus, so the wound on Magnus's arm vanishes under Merle's wise and watchful gaze. The giant gerbil wheel changes direction, must faster than something of that size should be  _ able _ to do, and rolls right over Hurley's wagon with an unstoppable force of height and girth. Taako ducks just in time, while Magnus leaps backward until the straps of his harness stretch taut on the rails, holding him on board at a forty-five degree angle off the back of the wagon. Solid desert speeds by right underneath him.

The roof of Hurley's wagon is, predictably, utterly crumpled right down, trapping Taako underneath the damaged metal that used to be his small vantage point. With a great deal of difficulty, he pokes his umbrella out of the wagon and casts Crown of Madness on one of the gerbil-dwarfs. A twisted crown of jagged barbed iron appears on the dwarf's head, and the entire giant gerbil wheel begins to wobble as it moves.

Merle leans over the side of the wagon and brings the Adamant Spanner down on the farthest edge of the crumpled metal. " _ Ace is the place with the helpful hardware man! _ " he yells into the wind, as Hurley's wagon spontaneously repairs itself. Metal screeches back into place and the roof pops back out in a matter of seconds.

Magnus clambers quickly back up onto the wagon, pulling himself up by his safety straps. He glares at the wobbling gerbil wheel roughly thirty feet to his left, decides  _ not _ to waste energy attacking it from here, and instead starts tying a long rope to a crowbar.

Another vehicle pulls out of the dust storm immediately behind them. This one actually looks a bit like Hurley's wagon, though nowhere near as expertly crafted or lovingly tuned, and it's manned by two riders wearing dolphin masks. Their war cry, barely audible over the wind, consists of dolphin squeaks and whistles. The one worrying thing they  _ do _ have is two separate ship cannons attached to either side of their wagon.

One of the two gerbil-dwarfs attacks their partner. They take a tiny hammer from their tool-belt and  _ whale _ on the other one with it, making for what would probably be quite a comedic spectacle in almost any other situation. The giant wheel wobbles even further as it turns in front of Hurley's wagon; Hurley spins her steering wheel desperately to avoid it; and then the entire gerbil-wheel battle wagon falls over sideways to crush the dolphin battle wagon, taking both out very effectively in one massive fell swoop.

Two horns blast somewhere above them.

Eight opposing wagons down.

~~~~

The Raven's longboat wagon has vanished from sight ahead of them, somewhere in the furious dust storm. It's impossible to be too concerned about this, though, because they can hardly see any  _ desert _ in the furious dust storm, and besides, everyone but Hurley needs to be prepared for the next boarding or murder attempt. None of them have exactly been picnics thus far.

The relative silence is broken abruptly by a loud  _ THUD _ . Merle looks to his right and sees a giant claw, reminiscent of an arcade machine, gripping the side door of the wagon. Hurley instinctively steers away from it, as any reasonable person would do, and the claw rips the entire door off, disappearing quickly into the dust.

"I had a  _ whole Cheerwine in that cupholder!" _ Merle shouts angrily into the wind. "And now it's gone!  _ Great! _ "

Taako squints into the wind, trying to see where the claw and their door went. There's a faint shadow off to their right, if he isn't imagining it, and — doesn't that dust storm look a little weird? Doesn't it look like there's something getting in the  _ way _ of the dust?

The claw shoots toward their wagon again, grabs onto Merle, and pulls him into the dust.

" _ Shit _ !" Hurley cries, trying desperately to steer towards him, but it's to no avail. Merle does his very best not to panic as Hurley's battle wagon vanishes into the desert haze, a feat made somewhat easier by the fact that he doesn't really have  _ time _ to panic. The claw pulls him up high into the sky and then quickly back down, until Merle splashes unceremoniously into a body of water.

_ KA-CHUNK _ .

Light vanishes, leaving Merle alone in a dark underwater space with no oxygen and absolutely no idea where he is.

Back on Hurley's battle wagon, Magnus leans forward past Taako. "Should I go after him!?"

"I mean, it's worth a shot!" Taako answers. " _ I'm  _ not doing anything, I've already used two spells, I'm beat!"

"He's still got the wrench, right!?"

"Do  _ something _ !" Hurley yells over her shoulder. "Shoot at it, or something!"

"OK, cool! I'll be right back!"

Magnus hooks his crowbar into the rails on the wagon, grasps the rope, and blindly  _ jumps _ . Against every single odd of physics, he actually  _ does _ hit the other battle wagon, broad shoulders slamming against scorching metal — and the moment he hits it, the dust cloud camouflage drops off, giving everyone their first proper glimpse of what they're up against.

It looks like a gumball machine. There's a ten-foot spherical glass tank, with a heavy metal hatch on top, built onto a sturdy six-wheel base driven by two dark elves wearing octopus masks. The claw that grabbed Merle is attached to the bottom of the tank, and inside the tank, a helpless Merle floats alongside a really big blue spotted octopus that is, undoubtedly, poisonous beyond belief.

Magnus's feet drag painfully along the ground, but he manages to get a good hold on the side of the wagon, keeping himself upright. Slowly, strenuously, he pulls himself up inch by inch, muscles straining, and yells back to Taako: "Magic missile the tank!"

"Yeah," Taako yells back, "but like — think about that, like, really  _ think _ , for  _ once _ , just  _ really _ think about it!"

"Action over thought!"

"Yeah, OK, that's fine, but really think about this one, scraps! If I magic missile the tank, how does that help us to proceed, forward, with our life goals!?"

Merle screams something from inside the tank, evident only by the bubbles rising quickly towards the hatch. 

"I don't see it going  _ badly _ !" Magnus shouts.

Taako sighs, studies the entire battle wagon for a moment, and then casts Reduce on the giant octopus instead. It instantly shrinks to about half of Merle's size, and examines its new tiny tentacles with an air of both surprise and dejection. 

"Octopiss off!" Taako shouts triumphantly.

The giant claw hooks itself back into the hole it originally made on the side of Hurley's wagon, and tries to pull the entire thing sideways. The tiny baby octopus, meanwhile, spins through the water and attaches itself to Merle's face, and it's probably a very good thing that Merle's a dwarf, because otherwise he would probably be instantly dead from octo-poison. Instead, he flails wildly in the water, yelling silently from the surprisingly sharp pain of an octopus beak bite, and tries to hit himself in the face with his warhammer. Being underwater slows the blow, but it  _ does _ succeed in loosening the octopus's grip.

Merle, as an update, is still incapable of breathing underwater. This is not a fact he is capable of forgetting, as his lungs burn like unholy fire.

Magnus, still hanging off the side of the wagon, swings Railsplitter into the wire that the claw is attached to, hacking it clean off. Then he swings Railsplitter again into the tank, cracking the glass and blasting himself in the face with a small jet of water. He splutters a little and swings  _ again _ , and the crack splinters around the entire tank until the glass completely shatters.

Merle lands right next to Magnus, and Magnus grabs him before he can go bouncing off into the desert. "Hey!" he yells with a grin. Merle refrains from answering because he's too busy sucking as much oxygen into his lungs as he can get.

The tiny baby octopus manages to attach itself to the back of the wagon, bouncing pathetically and wildly in the wind, a worried look in its eye.

With the tank broken, Magnus is able to haul himself up onto the flat base of the wagon, and pulls Merle up with him. After a moment's hesitation, he reaches down to help the octopus up onto the wagon as well.

"That's good eatin'!" Taako yells approvingly from thirty feet away.

Magnus turns and throws the octopus at the two drivers. They hear a  _ splurchhh _ as it suction cups onto the front windshield. The drivers turn on the windshield wipers, and they see the octopus go flying off the right side of the wagon, along with the distant glint of a safety bubble deploying around its tiny safety harness.

"Aw, man!" says Magnus. "Now I feel bad!"

"Guys, what should I do!?" asks Taako. "I don't wanna mess this thing up too bad if you're on it!"

"We have the rope!" Magnus replies. " _ Do it! _ "

"OK, that's, uh, Magnus's opinion, unsurprising, I'd say, I could have written that one myself, Merle!?"

"Don't hurt me!" Merle yells out hoarsely. " _Please,_ _don't hurt me!"_

"Excellent, OK, great!"

"Just aim  _ around _ him!" says Magnus.

"I think  _ I _ can do something!" Hurley cuts in. "Just aim for the tires, Taako! Aim for the treads!"

"OK!"

Taako casts Magic Missile on the front left tire. Three streams of damaging sparks pierce through the air to imbalance the tread and unbalance the vehicle, making it shudder dangerously under Magnus's and Merle's feet. Magnus grabs the back of Merle's shirt to keep him from flying off.

"Get ready to jump!" Hurley yells.

"What!?" Magnus cups a hand around one ear. "What did you say!?"

"That she wants us to hump!" says Merle.

"Yeah! I do! But that's a later thing!" Hurley shifts gears, grabs the wheel, and cuts it hard to the right, aiming straight for the octopus wagon at ramming speed. 

"Can you jump?!" says Magnus.

"Well," Merle answers optimistically, "I'm a stubby-legged little dwarf, but I'm gonna give it my best shot!"

As Hurley's wagon approaches at speed, Magnus  _ jumps _ , sailing effortlessly through the air like a leaf on the wind, and lands neatly with his crowbar and rope in the back. Merle chickens out at the last minute and mistimes his jump; it's painfully clear to anyone watching that he will  _ not _ be landing neatly on the back of Hurley's wagon next to Magnus, and will, in fact, be landing in  _ front _ of the wagon, which is quite likely a death sentence.

Taako, vibrating with anticipation, steps up and casts a spell he has been keeping in his arsenal since he first learned it, excitedly waiting for the opportune moment with which to reveal it. A likely death sentence during a dangerous battle wagon race is, he figures, as good an opportune moment as any.

A bolt of light erupts from the Umbrastaff in his hands, and underneath Merle, a phantom steed appears out of thin air, catching the stubby-legged dwarf in mid-jump and carrying him safely out of the way of the two wagons colliding.

The phantom steed is a large, quasi-real, horselike creature, a beautiful unicorn decked out in rainbow colours, sporting a giant horn, a mullet of a mane, and the name Garyl.  _ Erasure _ floats audibly on the wind during Garyl's summoning, and, with a perfectly tonal whinny rising expertly through the octaves, Garyl lands effortlessly on the ground. Merle clutches its neck desperately to keep from falling off, his hands full of rainbow mullet, and he chooses to take the next few seconds to figure out what the  _ fuck _ just happened and why he isn't paste on the desert sand.

Hurley puts the silvery chrome ram horns on the front of her wagon right into the damaged tire on the octopus gumball machine wagon, and the tread goes flying off, and Hurley immediately corrects straight ahead to avoid what happens next. What happens next, of course, is that the octopus wagon veers out of control until it flips over its side and vanishes into the dust.

"I hope they're OK!" says Hurley, chancing a look back over her shoulder.

"They've got the safety bubbles!" says Magnus. "They'll be  _ fine _ !"

They hear a distant, massive explosion.

Three horns blast from the pylons above them, signalling the simultaneous destruction of three battle wagons. Eleven opponents down.

"We are… definitely going to prison!" Magnus concludes, squinting into the dust clouds behind them.

"We'll unpack that later!" Hurley says, her hands tense on the wheel.

"If you need to hide the bodies, we have a cool spot!" says Taako.

"What!?"

"Nothing! Misspoke!"

Garyl comes galloping up alongside the wagon, with Merle now properly astride it, and Merle gives them all a cheerful wave. "I'm fine!" he assures them. "Everything's fine!"

With the Raven still a good distance ahead of them, five wagons total left in the race, and a magical unicorn creature who happily defies all laws of math and physics, the Reclaimers speed determinedly ahead.


	8. A Triumphant Return and a Clever Plan

This chapter's a regular stunt spectacular

Don't try this at home kids

Unless you happen to live in…  
 **… T _he Adventure Zone._**

~~~~

Finally,  _ finally _ , Hurley's wagon and Garyl both emerge from the dust cloud they've been battling through nearly the entire race so far, revealing open desert all around them, and the Raven's winged longboat about a hundred yards ahead of them, kicking up a straight line of dust behind it as it speeds over the sand. 

They appear to be in second place. There aren't any other wagons around.

The sun shimmers off of Goldcliff's skyline, glittering expectantly about a mile ahead. The finish line is right on the edge of the cliff the city occupies — it's with a tiny amount of trepidation that the Reclaimers remember Hurley will need to slam on the brakes the moment they cross it.

Surely there won't be any problems with  _ that,  _ though. Hurley's an expert.

"Taako, get ready!" Hurley yells from the driver's seat. "Get ready with the harpoon! We're still a little bit out of range, but we'll be able to nab her here really quick! Stay frosty!"

"OK!" Taako yells back. "Frosty indeed!"

A bestial roar echoes across the desert from behind. Magnus looks quickly back, half-expecting to see Klarg; instead what he sees emerging from the dust cloud is a gigantic armoured boar, a little bit bigger than Hurley's wagon, with two tusks shaved down to be serrated blades on the front of its head. Magnus grins wide in the shimmering desert sun; he absolutely  _ loves _ the idea of fighting a giant boar, armour or no armour, riders or no riders. The boar pulls a large chariot behind it, with two riders who are, unsurprisingly, wearing boar masks; and despite its heavy weight, the boar appears to be gaining on them.

And then, of course, because one large angry boar would have been quite enough to deal with on its own, another battle wagon emerges from the dust cloud on the other side, somehow still wearing the giant red shipping crate which hid all the battle wagons from each other at the start of the race. It's impossible to tell how the wagon is moving; there's no visible means of propulsion. It just looks like a big shipping crate moving smoothly across the sand.

"What's next, little man?" Garyl asks Merle. It's a quiet, composed, self-possessed little request, and yet Garyl somehow manages to make himself heard above the roar of the battle wagons and the rushing wind. 

"Seems to me," Merle answers, taking the surprising fact that Garyl can talk completely in his stride, "that we've got two opponents left before we make a run on the Raven, right?"

"Yeah, listen, here's my plan. Listen, listen, listen. Listen, I got a plan, that's go eat some  _ oats _ . Spectral  _ oatssssss.  _ Enriched with fibre and shit. Nah, I'm kidding, you're good. What's up?"

"Let's attack —"

"Yeah!"

"— the armoured boar —"

" _ Hell _ yeah!"

"— and see what kind of damage we can do!"

"Fuck that shit up, hell yeah! You're just a little man, though, you got a gun or something? 'Cause I don't know…"

"I've got better than a gun," Merle assures his magical mount. "I've got G _ uiding Bolt. _ "

"Hell yeah!"

Merle casts Guiding Bolt on the wooden connection between the armoured boar and the chariot; a shimmering arrow of light flies from the Extreme Teen Bible towards the boar, and, with a mighty  _ clunk _ , the wood glows with a mystical dim light and splinters. It's not quite strong enough to break the harness wholesale, but that mystical dim light sure seems like it'll eventually help to completely wreck the chariot's shit.

The boar and its chariot accelerate, coming up nearly adjacent with Hurley's wagon and Garyl. The rider with the crossbow fires a bolt and it lodges into Magnus's shoulder; the boar lunges at Garyl, and Garyl, as an extension of Taako's spirit, dodges effortlessly out of the way, leaving rainbow sparkles on the wind in its wake.

Magnus pulls the crossbow bolt out of his shoulder, quickly checks to make sure no major internal biological apparatus was nicked, and leaves the rest to the Bull's Strength spell Merle cast on him back at the beginning of the race; he leaps off the wagon towards the chariot, sailing right over Garyl, and narrowly missing the blow from a scimitar before landing easily in between the two boar riders. Magnus swings the blunt end of Railsplitter into the guy holding the scimitar, sending him staggering backwards into the crossbow-wielder, which unbalances the whole chariot and moves them further away from Hurley's wagon. With the chariot tilted, and Magnus's muscles glinting with magical power in the harsh sunlight, he lifts the scimitar guy high above his head and chucks him off into the desert away from the action. A bubble deploys around the scimitar guy as he flies off into the distance. Magnus spins back around, aiming to disarm the crossbow-wielder, but the rocking of the chariot only causes him to miss.

The scimitar guy in the safety bubble is hit and knocked to the side by an enormous tank-like battle wagon in the shape of a shark, with a cannon on top and no immediately visible window to any kind of cockpit.

"Oh yeah, those guys!" says Magnus, shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun. It's the Hammerhead gang, he realises, presumably thirsty to avenge their stolen arcane core. "We're going to need a bigger cart!"

Big razor-sharp fangs inside the shark tank's mouth begin to spin.

Merle pets Garyl affectionately ("I do appreciate that," says Garyl, "thank you so much"), and then he spurs the spectral unicorn on towards the boar chariot. Taako grins and flicks his wrist and Garyl grows a second elaborately badass rainbow horn, making him technically more of a binicorn than a unicorn and also — this is true — 200% more of a gorgeously relatable magic symbol. Merle, only dimly aware of this change, casts Spiritual Weapon at the crossbow wielder on the chariot as Garyl brings him closer; a giant tennis racket with a waffle iron on the front of it appears in the air, and it  _ smacks _ into the rider's face, knocking him off the wagon completely and deploying his safety bubble.

The boar  _ roars _ with bestial rage, probably at being the only surviving member of its team. 

"Hey! Who wants  _ bacon _ !" Taako shouts, and casts Fireball at the charging boar. For a brief moment, the boar is on fire, flesh sizzling under its armour, clearly  _ furious,  _ before the wind mitigates the rest of the flames and just barely manages to keep the boar alive in the process.

In the near-distance, the shipping crate falls apart. Emerging from it comes a big flat wagon bed with a small compartment at the front for the driver, carrying three humanoids wearing cricket masks, sporting gnarly-looking hand axes and big poles. Two of the humanoid cricket riders use their big poles to vault effortlessly over to Hurley's wagon; one lands on the hood, and the other manages to grip the edge of the wagon firmly enough not to fall off. The last cricket rider, the one who didn't vault over, holds up a glowing purple orb and points one finger at Taako. 

Before Taako can react or take any sort of defensive measure, he hears the sound of crickets in his head, and abruptly loses all control over his own body. He hoists himself up out of his chamber, unsnaps his safety harness, and throws it off the side of the wagon. Then he runs and takes a diving leap off the back.

" _ No!" _ Hurley shouts, voice muffled by the wind. 

Taako barely hears her. One of the reasons he barely hears her is that, as aforementioned, her voice is muffled by the wind. The second reason he barely hears her is that, as he flies backwards over the sand, he hears  _ another _ noise instead, the loud rumble of a nearby engine, and behind the shark tank he sees a stream of dust barrelling towards him. Just as he's about the hit the ground, he's snatched out of the air by a gigantic, furry hand, and placed into the sidecar of a battle wagon that looks remarkably like a motorcycle. 

Driving the cycle is Klarg, everyone's favourite bugbear.

"Wow!" says Klarg, affable and friendly once again. "That was a close call, wasn't it!?"

~~~~

Hurley's wagon, meanwhile, has far more opponents to contend with than Hurley is strictly comfortable with. Among those contenders are the Hammerheads' shark tank at the back of the pack; then there's Klarg, who may or may not be an enemy this time around, speeding along behind Hurley's wagon with Taako in tow; then there's the cricket flatbed wagon over on the right, with a rider sporting mind-control magic, and two other cricket-mask-wearing riders on Hurley's wagon ready to do some damage; then there's the enraged boar chariot on the left, currently being driven by Magnus, and Garyl the spectral rainbow mullet binicorn, currently being ridden by Merle.

No one's dead, though, least of all Taako. So, you know. There's that.

"Are you doing OK!?" Klarg asks Taako. "I was worried about you, when I saw you flying all hither and yon through the air!"

"Yeah, my dude!" says Taako, sounding remarkably cheerful for a man who just had a brush with definite death. "I'm good  _ now _ ! Thank you!"

"OK! You let me know if — I didn't bring my tea with me, this time, because I figured it would be a little intense out here, and not really great brewing conditions!"

"Right you are!" Taako squints closer at Klarg without trying to make himself too obvious — and sure enough, Klarg's eyes are glazed over, sort of like how he looked when he was under Taako's Charm spell. This is weird for a lot of reasons, most notably that Taako is about 99% sure he hasn't cast Charm even once today, and  _ certainly _ not on Klarg.

Up ahead of them, the angry armoured boar makes a lunge for Garyl and Merle, but Magnus yanks its neck back with the reins. He steers closer to Hurley's wagon, exerting impressive control over the enraged boar, and jumps over from the chariot to land on top of Hurley's hood. 

Hurley puts both her hands on top of the wagon's window and skilfully flips up to land right next to Magnus. "Where you been!" she says.

"Oh, I was in the chariot!"

Hurley runs up to the nearest cricket, leaps off his knee, and smashes her own knee into the face of the  _ other _ cricket rider; then she plants both her feet onto his chest and spring-leaps off, sending him flying, and plants the horns of her ram mask into the face of the other. She lands on her wagon's hood on one knee, while her two opponents land somewhere in the wagon's dust trail, safety bubbles deploying.

"Well, lucky I was here!" says Magnus, grudgingly impressed.

"Yeah!" says Hurley. "It's cool! I got this! I'm a very good monk!"

"Should I get back on my chariot, or…?!"

"No, if you want to hang out here, on the wagon, and help protect me — oh  _ shit _ !" Hurley flips back down into the driver's seat, having just remembered the reason she needs protection is that  _ she's the driver _ , and quickly steers the wagon right back on course, speeding up.

"I could use you here!" she calls up to Magnus. "If you feel like sticking around! Or if you want to keep, you know, satelliting, that's cool too! It's your prerogative!"

"I'll stay!"

"OK!"

There's a loud  _ BOOM _ from the shark tank in the near-distance behind them. The spear that has been spinning in the shark tank's mouth comes firing out. It narrowly misses Klarg and Taako, and sticks itself into the back of Hurley's battle wagon with a loud  _ CHUNK _ . Secured with a taut thick metal cable, it yanks Hurley's wagon back, spinning her wheels with a desperate high-pitched screeching noise as Hurley tries to speed up. 

Either the shark tank speeds up, or Hurley's forced to slow down, because the distance between them visibly closes worryingly quickly.

They pass under another black pylon, and the sound of a horn cuts through the air, different from the one that sounds out defeated battle wagons; it sounds much more like an alarm. The top of the pylon glows bright red, and a fiery beam shoots down at Klarg's cycle. Klarg steers away and narrowly avoids it, losing only the cycle's flag in the process.

"Woah! That was rude!" says Klarg. "I wonder what caused that!"

"Hey, Klarg," says Taako, "are you supposed to be in this race!?"

"Well, no! I thought it might be dangerous, and I thought it would be hospitable if I kept an eye on you, Taako! You're my very good friend! I don't want anything bad happening to Taako! If you're asking if I signed up and paid my fees, the answer is no! But it's just  _ land _ , I don't see why  _ they _ get to say who can be where doing what!"

Taako flounders a little. "I mean — I'm with you, Ron Paul, let's do this, but, um — I need to get back into the action there, into the fray!"

"OK! Just tell me where you want me to go, and I can get you there in one piece! I just want to make sure you're doing just fine!"

It has to be the same Charm spell he cast all the way back in the cave, Taako reasons, because the subject of a Charm spell always attaches to the  _ caster _ of the Charm spell. But that can't be possible, because Charm spells don't last for longer than an hour, let alone for  _ weeks,  _ and Klarg clearly wasn't under its effect back at the Hammerhead base anyway.

Whatever. A mystery for another time. 

"Klarg," Taako says, "in the interim, try to get as close to her as you can! OK!? To Hurley!"

"You got it, dude!"

"Great, dude!" Taako straightens up and blasts the now-riderless boar with Magic Missile. The boar, already massively injured from being on fire just a little bit earlier, finally gives up the ghost; it collides with Hurley's battle wagon one last time and then slumps off out of the race. Hurley and Klarg both have to perform deft steering manoeuvres to get out of the way, while the shark tank simply runs right over the chariot and utterly demolishes it.

The boar, fortunately, avoids the same fate.

A horn blasts from the pylon. Another battle wagon down.

"Garyl!" says Merle.

" _ Believe _ ," answers Garyl.

"Get me to the cricket crate!"

"Yeah! I like that!"

Garyl leaps dexterously over Hurley's battle wagon and lands gracefully over by the cricket wagon, kicking up dust and sand and rainbow sparkles, drawing the attention of the mind-controlling cricket rider on the edge of the flatbed.

" _ Smash that dipshit _ !" screams Taako, who, quite understandably, still harbours a little bit of resentment over being forced to seppuku himself off the back of the wagon.

Merle hefts the magical spanner in both hands and absolutely  _ smashes _ it into the cricket rider, aiming squarely for the magical orb in their hands, knocking it high into the air.

" _ Fore _ !" Merle shouts, as the orb vanishes, sparkling, somewhere off into the desert.

"Aww!" the cricket rider laments, while the flatbed driver spins the wheel to try and slam right into Garyl. To the dismay of everyone who witnesses it, Garyl gets pulled under the wagon's wheels; Merle, fortunately, jumps off at the last second and lands hard on the flatbed. 

" _ Thank you for believing~… _ " are the very last words that Garyl says before vanishing in a puff of rainbow dust.

The cricket rider Merle landed beside spins around and slashes a dagger right across Merle's abdomen, which is somewhat less fortunate than Merle's safe and miraculous landing on the flatbed just a second earlier.

Magnus clambers over to where the shark tank's solid iron spear is buried in the back of Hurley's wagon, noting idly that if Taako had still been in the gunner compartment, he'd probably be speared and very dead, and then slams Railsplitter into the thick barbed spear as though it's a wooden tree trunk. It does no obvious damage. With a growl of frustration, Magnus draws his bow and looses an arrow at the cricket rider stabbing Merle, which buries itself in the cricket's stomach and drives him backwards a few steps. 

Hurley's entire battle wagon shudders as the shark tank retracts even more of the spear's cable. 

The next pylon they pass sounds a warning alarm, and Klarg immediately steers out of the path of the proceeding laser bolt, leaving a black singe mark on the ground behind them. Taako pushes himself up out of the sidecar a little and studies the shark tank. "Hey, Klarg!?"

"Yes, sir!?"

"Can you scoot on over closer to the tank!?"

"Uh, that seems dangerous, are you sure about that!?"

"Oh,  _ positively _ , my dear!"

Klarg slows the cycle down and draws up near the shark tank, per Taako's request. "What are you going to do!? I'm worried!"

"Listen, we're buds, right? For life?"

"Yeah! You're my main — are you asking if you're my main dude!?"

"Yeah! Are we main dudes!?"

"I would say  _ absolutely _ we're main dudes!"

"Excellent! Can you hop on that tank for me!?"

"What do you mean!?"

"You know how the lasers keep shooting you and stuff!? I'd really love it if you could hop on that tank for me!"

"It seems like it might be dangerous!"

"Yeah, little bit! But we're buds!"

"Of course, what am I saying! Danger is nothing between friends!"

"Of course! Excellent! I'll take the reins, no problem! Just give it a leap!"

Klarg and Taako clumsily switch positions, and then Klarg takes a flying leap on to the side of the tank. "What's the next step here, boss!?" he shouts back to Taako, hanging precariously off of the edge.

"Just chill on it!" Taako orders him. "It's gonna be  _ fine _ !"

"OK, if you say so!"

"But listen, if you see the laser, don't get hit by that! Just make sure it hits the tank for sure!"

With those final words, Taako revs the cycle and takes off back up towards Hurley's wagon.


	9. Victory, or Maybe Not Quite a Victory Yet

Can our heroes reach out and take a bite of that sweet chequered flag

It's the final lap of…  
… **T _he Adventure Zone._**

~~~~

Taako, still driving the cycle after leaving Klarg behind gripping precariously on to the edge of the shark tank, zooms forward with a twist of the throttle to come up alongside the cricket flatbed wagon, where the mind-control rider is still reeling from Magnus's fired arrow and Merle is still trying to carefully navigate having been stabbed.

The cycle has a lot more power than Taako originally thought. Twisting the throttle nearly has it ripping out from underneath him before he's able to compensate. Far from scaring him, though, the fact only spurs him on with a wild grin, and as he comes up alongside the wagon he fires off a Scorching Ray. Two bolts of magical energy go straight for the mind-control rider, who catches on fire immediately and is blasted back through the air, and  _ remains _ on fire even as their safety bubble deploys. A third bolt goes straight for the driver, blasting through the back windshield, and they can all hear the long telltale noise of a horn someone's fallen on top of.

"Peace out, psycho mantis!" Taako crows triumphantly.

The cricket wagon begins to wobble and veer off course. Merle vaults feet-first through the broken back windshield, kicking the driver out of the wagon entirely, and grabs the steering wheel.

A horn blasts from the pylon above. Another opponent down, though the wagon itself is still, technically, intact and in the race. With Merle driving the cricket flatbed wagon, Taako driving the cycle, and Hurley and Magnus still on their original battle wagon, they've practically got themselves a convoy.

They pass under the pylon, which sounds another warning horn. Klarg, back on the shark tank, readies himself, and a bright red beam fires down to cut a path right through the shark tank. The top of the tank begins to slide backwards off the wagon, revealing the harpoon gun that fired the cable and a disembodied pair of legs that simply fall over. 

The only surviving member of the Hammerheads gang sits up, and even from a distance, they can tell that it's Maarvie, the leader, arguably the most dangerous one. 

Klarg surfs the top of the tank as it slides off the back, and as it hits the ground he ping-pongs off and goes rolling backwards over the hot desert sand.

"Good job, buddy!" Taako calls after him, though there's no hope whatsoever of Klarg hearing it.

" _ Damn _ you guys!" Maarvie yells. " _ Damn you guys _ !"

He pulls on a lever, which retracts the cable back even further, and the spinning teeth in the shark tank's mouth bite down into the trunk of Hurley's wagon, narrowly missing Magnus encased in Taako's gunner compartment.

Completely unbothered by all of this, the Raven, far off in the distance, looks like she's about to handily win the entire race.

Magnus takes a running leap and sails over the front of the shark tank, where he can see the smoking remains of more gang members who were caught by the pylon beam, and lands dominant over Maarvie. With one fast two-handed strike, he cuts a deep gash into Maarvie's left arm; then, with another fast two-handed strike, he brings Railsplitter down into the tank's dashboard. There's an explosion of sparks back up into Magnus's face, but the harpoon frees itself from Hurley's wagon with a  _ kachunk _ , letting her speed ahead.

Taako grips the cycle's handlebars, shifts it into a ludicrous speed, and takes off after the Raven. He taps the side of the vehicle under him with his umbrella to cast Enlarge, doubling the size of the entire cycle, and speeds up even  _ further _ , with Taako hanging just off the edge of the giant handlebars, closing the distance towards the Raven.

Merle steers the cricket flatbed as close to Hurley's wagon as he can manage, kicks open the door, and jumps over onto Hurley's wagon, landing neatly right in shotgun position. He lifts the hatch over the big red button, makes a fist —

"One second, bronco!" yells Hurley, catching his fist. "Let's get all our chickens home to roost before you kick that bad boy off!"

"Oh! OK, Tex!"

Maarvie reaches under the annihilated dashboard of the shark tank and pulls out a hammer, then swings it at Magnus's knees. It doesn't exactly sweep Magnus off his feet, but it does hurt him like  _ hell _ , and with an angry shout Magnus brings the axe down on Maarvie's head. Maarvie spins 360 degrees, gore spurting everywhere, and then falls to the ground very much dead at the same moment as a horn blasts from the nearest pylon. 

Maarvie's safety bubble deploys. There's a slow screeching sound as it drops, ever so slightly, down out of the shark tank, and then vanishes out into the desert. Magnus doesn't give it so much as a backwards glance; he runs and jumps back onto Hurley's wagon, straps himself back into the rails, and braces himself for whatever the hell the big red button does.

"Taako, you good up there!?" Hurley yells.

"Do you want us to win, or what!?" Taako yells back.

"I desperately want us to win!"

"I got it!"

"OK! Well, just as a backup plan —!" She leans over to Merle with a wild grin. "Let's  _ do _ this thing!"

Merle slams his fist into the big red button.

~~~~

T he two big chrome ram horns on the front of Hurley's wagon rotate ninety degrees until they look like two big wings off the side. They start to rattle and shake, as do the tailpipes on the back of the wagon, and then a deafening blast of blue flame shoots out both the tailpipes and the rams' horns simultaneously. The entire battle wagon turns into a big fiery blue arrow, and it gains a pretty  _ tremendous  _ amount of speed all at once, pressing Magnus and Merle painfully back into their various seats and straps.

It lasts for ten seconds before all of the blue flame dies down, but ten seconds is all Hurley needs. When the flame clears up, she's neck-and-neck with the Raven's sleek battle wagon and Taako's ludicrously giant cycle.

Two big black pylons mark the finish line ahead of them, with the cliff dropoff just beyond. Goldcliff militia wagons sit glinting in the desert sun along with a large crowd of cheering spectators. Hurley and Sloane both laugh so hard under their masks that it's audible even above the wind, and there's a light implication of  _ banter _ in the insults they shout at each other. 

Taako tucks the Umbrastaff under his arm. He kicks in the emergency brake on the cycle. Then, in an extremely rare moment displaying both competency and a clear memory of items he already owns, he pulls out the Wand of Switcharoo he acquired from his very first visit to Fantasy Costco, and fires it right at Sloane. 

In a split second, Taako appears in the winged canoe floating off the ground, and Sloane appears on the braked cycle at the back of the pack. She wobbles with surprise, takes a hard tumble — and Taako fires through the air like an arrow. 

Magnus jumps onto the Raven's canoe, driven by nothing more or less than the pure desire to be on the winning wagon. Taako, motivated by nothing more or less than the pure desire to be the  _ sole _ winner, takes out the Gustmaster 5000 folding fan he got from Leon's Gachepon that one time and blows Magnus right back. The two wagons trade further blows in a mostly-jovial manner as they speed forward, each trying to be the winning wagon; and then, by a single hair's breadth, Taako wins, speeding under a metric ton of confetti firing from the pylons above.

"Brakes!" Magnus immediately shouts.

Taako yanks on the brake lever, and comes to a screeching stop right at the cliff's edge while the pylons' horns sing a jovial victory song. The crowd abruptly goes completely nuts, as crowds at the finish lines of races are apt to do, and once Hurley also comes to a stop, they can see Captain Captain Bane on the sideline looking extremely proud. 

Hurley pumps a fist in the air. "Second  _ place _ !" she cheers.

"Congratulations, I guess," says Taako, wearing a smug grin to end all smug grins.

" _ Well _ , you know, the way  _ I _ see it," says Magnus, "we're all on the same team, so as soon as  _ one _ of us crossed, I feel like we  _ all _ won. It's not really based on the vehicle. If you look in the battle wagon rulebook, which I have right here —"

They almost don't notice when Sloane appears in the distance, kicking up dust as she speeds toward the finish line. They almost don't see the way she shudders, holding her chest, the path of the cycle wobbling beneath her. They almost don't notice the giant streaks of blue lightning shooting off of her body.

Fortunately, they  _ do _ notice all of this, so they're at least semi-prepared when the lightning strikes the ground and giant vines quickly and violently shoot up out of the desert. The cliff shakes; pieces of it at the very edge break off completely and fall to their bouldery doom on the packed desert sand far below. 

Sloane doesn't even try to brake.

"Sloane,  _ no _ !" Hurley screams, but to no avail — Sloane and the cycle fly off the edge of the cliff and disappear. 

A blast of wind knocks back the few people who hazarded a look over the edge to see if Sloane hit the ground. Like someone flipped a switch, the sky turns pitch-black, and a tornado forms only a few dozen feet off in the distance, growing quickly to become nearly a mile wide, surrounded by thousands and thousands of large ravens, whose sleek black wings beat hard in the growing wind of the tornado.

"So, uh," says Magnus to Hurley, staring at the spectacle. "How's the whole 'beat her and she'll give us the sash' thing going?"

Hurley takes off her ram's mask, looking completely and utterly devastated, oblivious to the gasps of surprise from those in the crowd who can see her face. Magnus, who is  _ not _ completely oblivious to those gasps, does the only thing he can think of; he pulls off his own mask and bows to the spectators. "I've been Magnus the  _ whole time! _ " he announces, to deafening silence and confusion as almost everyone's attention is drawn by the raven tornado instead.

Merle pulls his own mask off and stands up on the seat. "And  _ I'm _ Bruce Wayne," he announces.

"I'm  _ actually _ a mongoose," says Taako.

Hurley straps herself back into the driver's seat, a new look of determination on her face. "I've asked you boys for too much already," she says, leaning out the window so they can hear her better. "I can't ask you to risk your lives again. But —"

Magnus gets right back up on her wagon and straps himself back into the rails. Hurley looks at him, and smiles gratefully. "We've got to try and save her, right?"

"Yes," says Magnus. "We will."

Taako rolls his eyes, clambers out of the canoe, and takes his original place in the gunner compartment. "No adventure would be complete without Weasel Man!" he informs them all. 

Hurley laughs, and cries, and for a second isn't able to speak. "Thank you, Weasel Man," she says softly.

In the ensuing silence, all three of them look at Merle.

"Alright, alright, alright," grumbles Merle. "I'll come too. Just let me fix some shit with the big wrench."

In moments, with taps of the Adamant Spanner, Merle changes a tyre, pries the big Shark Tank harpoon off the back, and closes up the hole it made. Then he straps himself back into the passenger seat, Hurley throws the car in reverse, and —

"Wait, real quick, before we go," says Magnus. "Maybe a new harness for Taako?"

Hurley blinks up at Magnus. "We don't have one."

A short moment of silence sits heavily over them.

"OK, let's go!" Magnus says. "Actually, you know what — Taako, take my harness."

"No," says Taako, "don't worry about it. I'll finagle me some mongoose wings. I just extend them, at any point, and it's no problem."

"Oh, cool."

"Are you sure you know what a moongoose is?" asks Merle.

Still laughing, and still crying, Hurley backs the wagon up a good couple hundred feet, revs the engine several times, and then releases the brake. The wagon flies forward.

"What the  _ hell are you doing _ —" they just about manage to hear from Captain Captain Bane, before there's no longer any ground underneath their tyres and the only noise they can hear is the rush of the tornado ahead of them.   



End file.
